About Me

My scientific background stems from my desire to become a lifelong learner and be immersed at the forefront of discovery and education. My academic journey began at an art-focused high school that sparked my fascination with the physical world. To learn as much as possible about the physical world, I enrolled in Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, where I joined Professor Jennifer N. Cha's lab and contributed to the synthesis of a polymer with post-synthetic functionalization capabilities. Hoping to learn about the interface of engineering and health-related research, I pursued a Ph.D. in Professor Eduardo Reátegui's lab at The Ohio State University in Chemical Engineering, where I developed technologies to phenotype extracellular vesicles (EVs) at a single-particle resolution and modeled breast cancer in 2D and 3D  to understand EV secretion, combinatorial drug treatments, and dormancy. To further my understanding of human health, I am a National Institutes of Health (NIH) T32 Postdoctoral Fellow under the guidance of Dr. Willa A. Hsueh, a physician-scientist and the Director of the Diabetes and Metabolism and Research Center at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, where I investigate the role of adipocyte interorgan signaling.