research

Neurophysiological Biomarker Analysis and Advancing Neuromodulation

I’ve been interested in therapeutic strategies for Parkinson’s Disease for years, and my interest in physics coupled to that and brought me to neuromodulation in college. I became deeply interested in how we can modulate the electrophysiology of the brain, especially after taking a course on neural biophysics and joining the publications division of Neurotech@Berkeley.

After graduating, I joined Dr. Sameer Sheth’s lab at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. There, I worked on identifying, quantifying, and analyzing biomarkers for disorders such as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Depression. Recently, I’ve been working with Dr. Nader Pouratian’s and Dr. Bradley Lega’s groups, continuing investigations into the electrophysiology of depression and memory.

Biophysical Chemistry of T Cell Activation

As an undergraduate, I worked in Dr. Jay Groves’ lab where I studied T cell activation at molecular scale. Under my mentor Dr. Joey DeGrandchamp, I performed experiments on reconstructed membranes patterned with signaling proteins from T cells to biophysically characterize key steps in the T cell activation pathway. In particular, we developed one of the first robust, fluorescent microscopy enabled, membrane-localized in vitro assays for quantifying the activity of PLC \(\gamma\) 1, a critical enzyme that drives the activation of T cells. Our hope is that advancing our understanding of key biophysical features of this system can lead to the development of novel therapeutics for T cell lymphomas and other immunological disorders.

In the lab, I also briefly worked on in silico simulation of competitive enzymatic reactions in geometrically confined systems with Dr. Hyuneil Kim. The work falls under a larger paradigm of work in biological pattern formation, which is a truly beautiful feature of complex molecular systems obeying simple reaction diffusion equations, both in deterministic and stochastic frameworks. Working on the mechanisms behind how different patterns form in nature (whether they are the stripes on a zebra or the polarization waves of molecules in a cell that control cell development) is really fun, and great for any mathematics or physics enthusiasts wanting to work on cool biological systems!

If you have any interests in biophysical chemistry, please reach out! I’m always happy to talk to both those who’ve been in the field for decades, and those deciding if it’s what they might like to pursue in college.

Protein Conformational Dynamics

In the summer of 2021, I worked in Dr. Vasanthi Jayaraman’s lab on the conformational dynamics of TMEM16F, a lipid/ion channel. This was a really fun project, as I got to use single molecule fluorescence microscopy (smFRET) to interrogate the dynamics of individual proteins immobilized on microscope slides. Working here really gave me an appreciation of how far biophysics has come in the last 100 years, from the impressive work of Rosalind Franklin on the crystallography of DNA to todays advanced structural and dynamical single molecule techniques.

I was really happy to present my work in a poster session at the annual 2022 Biophysical Society Meeting at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. I am always excited to hear more about work in single molecule structural biology and conformational dynamics!