Research

I work on synthetic biology research in Dr. Sudarshan Pinglay's lab at the Seattle Hub for Synthetic biology and on computing education research with Dr. R. Benjamin Shapiro.

I'm interested in how DNA encodes features of organisms, not on the level of specific genes, but on the level of the entire genome! Right now, my work is focused on mammalian genomes and on how much of their genomes are essential. My work is primarily computational; however, I also do some wet lab work with mammalian cell cultures. While my work is computational, and I am a computer scientist by training, my research does not involve or incorporate generative "AI," and I don't rely on generative "AI" in any stage of my research process.

I also work on the yEvo Mutation Browser with the Dunham Lab.

Previous research

Before starting my PhD at UW, I did research in the Leonard Lab at the Center for Synthetic Biology at Northwestern University. I worked with Dr. Hailey Edelstein on characterizing synthetic transcription factors.

I was also part of the Xenobot Group Northwestern's Center for Robotics and Biosystems where I worked on simulations of growing rigid body robots.