CV

Published Research:

  • Liquid-like and Rigid Body Motions in Molecular-Dynamics Simulations of a crystalline protein — Structural Dynamics
    • Published December 2019
    • Used crystalline Molecular Dynamics simulations of proteins to validate and gain insight into the assumptions of simple, phenomenological disorder models (Liquid-like Motions and Rigid Body Motions) used to interpret diffuse scattering data from X-ray protein crystallographic experiments
    • Found that the exponential decay in atomic pair correlations predicted by the Liquid-like Motions (LLM) model is justified on the global scale (for all atoms pairs, and for inter-protein atom pairs)
    • Found that, for inter-protein atom pairs, a combination of the Liquid-like and Rigid Body motions (RBM) model is justified
    • Provided clues about how correlated motions of atom pairs both within and across proteins might manifest differently in diffraction data sampled more or less finely in reciprocal space

Post Graduate Education and Mentorship:

  • Currently a PhD Candidate at the University of California Irvine
    • Fall 2016 to Spring 2021
    • Degree: Pharmaceutical Sciences
    • Research: Performing Molecular Dynamics simulations of protein crystals to study disorder models used to interpret diffuse scattering in X-ray protein crystallography
  • Applied Machine Learning Summer Fellowship at Los Alamos National Lab
    • June 2018 to August 2018
    • Used Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) to analyze charge-density trajectories from crystalline MD simulations of protein crystals
  • Graduate Student Assistance at Los Alamos National Lab
    • January to August 2019
  • Summer Research Assistant at Los Alamos National Lab
    • June 2020 to August 2020

Work Experience:

  • Revolution Prep
    • August 2015 to October 2016
    • One-on-one tutoring in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics, and preparation for the SAT/ACT

Undergraduate Education:

  • Claremont McKenna College (Class of 2015)
    • Bachelor’s Degree in Physics

Undergraduate Research:

  • Under the mentorship of Paul S. Nerenberg
    • January to June 2014
    • Learned the basics of Molecular Dynamics Simulations and student improvements to non-bonded parameters in the AMBER MD forcefields for the simulation of small molecule liquids
  • REU in the Savin Lab at Colombia University (with Drs. Kenneth Miller and Natalie de Ruette)
    • June to August 2014
    • Gained experience in the maintenance of a large experimental apparatus, and simulated a future addition to the apparatus for the separation and merging of an ion beam, and the trapping of the ion beam in a chamber.
  • Senior Thesis: with Dr. Yun Lyna Luo of Western University of Health Sciences
    • September 2014 to June 2015
    • AMBER simulations studying peptide differentiation mechanism of Calpain isoforms binding to a PTEN peptide