2024 CBI cohort: Meet incoming students

Ace Aguilar

(Chemistry)

Olga Merino-Chavez

(Chemical & Systems Biology)

Olga was born and raised in El Salvador in Central America. After working full-time for a couple of years, she completed a BS in Biochemistry. During undergrad she did an internship at a start-up biotechnology company developing an at home diagnostic machine for viruses such as SARS-CoV-2. In her senior year of school, she joined Dr. Ming Hammond’s lab designing and engineering a dual modality protein-based biosensor using FMN as the fluorogenic chromophore and as a source of singlet oxygen production to initiate dopamine polymerization for Electron Microscopy imaging inside of bacteria. She has always been interested in antimicrobial resistance. Especially understanding how certain molecules like cyclic-di-GMP can control bacterial processes like antibiotic resistance by using efflux pumps. Understanding these signaling mechanisms is important to develop new therapeutic strategies when antibiotic resistance bacteria in patients.

Sophia Chen

(Bioengineering)

Laney Flanagan

(Chemical & Systems Biology)

Laney is originally from Maui, Hawai’i, but moved to the east coast to earn her B.S. in Chemistry and Biology from MIT in 2022. After graduation, she stayed in the Cambridge area to work as a research assistant for the biotech startup Cerberus Therapeutics, which aims to develop alpaca-derived nanobody technologies able to selectively modulate the immune system in autoimmune and infectious diseases. The nature of a five-person team meant that she was involved in many aspects of the company’s research, from recombinant nanobody production and modification to immunological mousework, and was a primary motivator driving her toward interdisciplinary research. Now starting her PhD in Chemical and Systems Biology, Laney is interested in applying both disciplines to improve the developmental pathways by which novel biological therapeutics are discovered. She believes that a dual understanding of both what’s possible using chemistry and how the immune system will react could expand the breadth of new technologies that can actually become approved.

Regina Sanchez Flores

(Bioengineering)

Regina is originally from Guadalajara, Mexico. She graduated from Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM) in 2022 with a Bachelor's in Biotechnology Engineering. Over the past few years, she has had the opportunity to work at some incredible institutions, including Tecnológico de Monterrey, the Technical University of Denmark, the University of Montreal, Harvard Medical School, and most recently Stanford University. Her research has spanned immunology, biomaterials, 3D bioprinting, tissue engineering, and cellular biophysics. Some of the most interesting projects she has worked on include investigating the impact of STAT5 deficiency on the formation of secondary lymphoid organs; identifying genes involved in increased blood-brain barrier permeability during acute inflammation; developing a digital light processing (DLP) method for 3D bioprinting tissues with unprecedented cell density and structural complexity; and most recently, determining which nuclear envelope proteins regulate the shape of the nucleus in mammalian cells. Besides research, she also enjoys engaging in social entrepreneurship, which has given me a perspective on how scientific innovations can benefit the community. Her goal is to combine scientific expertise with entrepreneurial skills to create accessible therapies that can improve human health.

Aditi Gnanasekar

(MSTP)

Aditi is a Bay Area native and received her B.S. in Bioengineering: Biotechnology from UC San Diego in 2022. She joined the Stanford MSTP in the Fall of 2022 and is pursuing an MD and PhD in Cancer Biology. She is studying the role of extrachromosomal DNA in driving cancer progression in Dr. Paul Mischel's lab. 

Vic Hempstead

(Chemical Engineering)

Leyi Huang

(Biology)

Leyi is an international student from China who moved from Hangzhou to San Diego for college. Throughout her undergraduate journey at UC San Diego, she immersed herself in fascinating research projects, from unraveling the mysteries of nucleus-forming bacteriophages to engineering novel fluorescent biosensors for kinases. These experiences deepened her fascination not only with dynamic cellular processes but also with the tools that allow researchers to "see" – from fluorophores to computational models. By joining the CBI program as a Biology graduate student, she hopes that her research interest in studying the spatial compartmentalization of signaling pathways will benefit from chemistry, which provides the foundational knowledge to design probes for specific molecules, and engineering, which empowers her to manipulate these probes. 

Châu Lê

(Chemistry)

Châu is originally from Vietnam but has spent the last few years in the US. She studied biochemistry at Lawrence University, and afterwards worked as a research assistant at UCSF. At Stanford, she will be enrolling in the Chemistry program. She is excited to be a part of CBI and carry out impactful interdisciplinary research. She is most interested in engineering proteins as therapeutics for difficult diseases, but is excited to explore other areas as well. 

Giovan McKnight

(Chemistry)

Giovan was raised in Rochester, NY. He recently graduated from Harvard University where he concurrently earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in chemistry. At Harvard, Giovan pursued term-time research in Professor Brian Liau’s lab. He primarily worked on the chemical synthesis of covalent probes: small molecules with cysteine-reactive warheads which can bind to protein (in some cases in mutant-selective fashion) and disrupt function. Through summer internships, Giovan has experience working in stem cell biology, total synthesis/organic chemistry and industry (Gilead Sciences). Giovan hopes to leverage these experiences as he pursues doctoral research in chemical biology at Stanford. Giovan currently has broad research interests but is focused on leveraging chemical methods to improve human health.

Qusay Omran

(MSTP)

Qusay is an MD/PhD student who was born in Bahrain and grew up in Grand Rapids, MI. He graduated with a B.S. in Chemistry from Yale in 2021. While in college, Qusay conducted research in RNA chemical biology, spending a summer in Dr. John Schneekloth's lab at the National Cancer Institute and completing his senior thesis work on self-splicing introns under the mentorship of Dr. Anna Pyle. After graduating, he briefly worked in peptide drug discovery at a biotechnology firm in Cambridge, MA. In 2022, he began medical school at Stanford and has developed his interests in drug discovery and cell therapies, with a long-term goal of becoming a physician-scientist focused on treating cancer and immunologic disorders. He is pursuing his PhD under the guidance of Dr. Steven Banik using genetic circuits to study proteostasis in healthy and diseased states.

Anna Pons

(Chemistry)

Anna Pons is from Mexico City. She has always played soccer, which led her to study in the US on a soccer scholarship. She graduated with a Bachelor's in Chemistry from the University of West Florida. She loves keeping her mind busy and discovering new things, which has made her become passionate about research in the lab, having several experiences in different disciplines such as inorganic chemistry, immunology, and molecular biology. She has decided to pursue a PhD because she is passionate about studying infectious diseases and antibiotic resistance. She is eager to learn more and improve her skills with the aim of improving human health. In the future, she would like to work in the pharmaceutical industry. Nevertheless, as a Mexican woman, she aspires to improve science in her country and give opportunities to minority groups by opening a research lab in Mexico.

Krishna Raghavan

(Chemistry)

Krishna is originally from the Detroit area of Michigan, and obtained bachelor’s degrees in biological chemistry and chemistry from the University of Chicago in 2024. In his undergraduate research with Professor Ka Yee Lee, Krishna studied the protein–lipid interactions of alpha-synuclein, a Parkinson’s Disease protein, using fluorescence spectroscopy. Through this experience, he enjoyed using experimental physical chemistry to probe questions in biology and health. In graduate school at Stanford Chemistry as a Sarafan ChEM-H CBI trainee, Krishna is interested in studying the biophysics of proteins relevant to human health, integrated with approaches in chemical biology. He is interested in approaching protein–molecule interactions by combining techniques across disciplines, including computation. As a scientist, Krishna is interested in questions that blur the lines between biology, chemistry, and human health. He believes that intersectionality extends creative boundaries and maximizes intellectual freedom. 

Dagny Reese

(Bioengineering)

Dagny Reese is PhD student in Bioengineering, originally from Toronto, Canada. She previously completed her BSc in Biomedical Sciences at University College London and her MMSc in Immunology at Harvard Medical School. At UCL, she completed her Bachelor’s Dissertation on tissue-resident NK-cell control of HCMV infection at the Reeve’s HCMV Lab at the UCL Institute of Immunity and Transplantation. At HMS, her research at the Garcia-Beltran Lab at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard addressed the role of chemokines in solid-tumour pathogenesis, engineering NK-cell responses, and NK-cell control of sarbecoviruses and orthopoxviruses. In the lab, she is very interested in investigating how cells respond to and integrate chemical signals in their environments.

Chibuike Uwakwe

(MSTP)

Chibuike Uwakwe is a student in the MD/PhD Program at Stanford University School of Medicine. Originally from Wilson, North Carolina, Chibuike graduated from Harvard University in 2023 with an AB in Biomedical Engineering, where he engineered circuit-embedded knit fabrics for wearable metabolite sensing applications. His research interests lie in developing wearable bioelectronics for continuous biological monitoring and personalized medicine. He employs electrochemistry to sensitively and selectively quantify molecular biomarkers in biofluids for the early diagnosis and monitoring of chronic conditions. 

Jared Xia

(Biochemistry)

Jared Xia was raised in Clayton, California and earned his B.S. in Biochemistry, graduating summa cum laude, from Brigham Young University. As an undergraduate at BYU, Jared was involved in various research projects encompassing both biochemistry and organic synthesis. In the lab of Dr. Josh Andersen, Jared performed a mechanistic study of changes in the activity of non-receptor tyrosine kinase TNK1 following a lymphoma-associated gene fusion. He also performed summer research in the lab of Dr. Monther Abu-Remaileh, where he performed a mechanistic study of candidate mitochondrial polyamine importers. Lastly, he also gained experience developing novel methods for the synthesis of dehydroamino acid-containing peptides in the lab of Dr. Steven Castle. During his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Stanford, Jared is excited to explore the usage of chemical tools to identify molecular targets of metabolites and to understand the significance of these interactions in cellular and organismal function. He is also interested in studying the dysregulation of metabolites and their molecular targets in aging and other diseases. As a CBI fellow, Jared looks forward to performing interdisciplinary research as well as engaging in mentorship and outreach to support future scientists.