I am a born-and-raised San Franciscan, who comes from a Vietnamese-American background, and am also the first in my family to go to college. After graduating from UCLA with a Biology degree, I competed as an athlete for several years before returning to the sciences. Because of my school gap and lack of research experience, I signed up for courses through the CCSF Biotechnology Program. I was able to refresh much of my basic biology and chemistry and also acquired new technical lab skills that are being used in today’s industry. From this, I obtained my first CCSF internship at the Baraban Lab, in the UCSF Neurosurgery Department. I learned how to use zebrafish to study pediatric epilepsy, and was also exposed to CRISPR technology. After this internship, I signed up for the CIRM Stem Cell internship, where I worked for 9-months in the Kampmann Lab, in the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases. Here, I used hiPSCs to study microglia in the context of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Thanks to my experiences, I was able to get a full-time job as a Junior Specialist in the Dunn Lab, at the UCSF Department of Ophthalmology, where I will study neuronal activity in the retinal system. I will be exploring graduate school programs during my time at the Dunn Lab. When I’m not doing science, I enjoy hanging out with my family and playing catch with my dog.