Name: Riley Henning Hometown: Atlanta, GA Lab: Prairie Lab in the Environmental and Ocean Sciences Department at the University of San Diego Lab website: http://home.sandiego.edu/~jcprairie/ Hobbies: Surfing, hiking, painting, reading, and gardening What do you study? I study the stickiness of phytoplankton using 3D images. When phytoplankton run into each other in the ocean, they can sometimes […]

Name: Victor Pai Hometown: I grew up in Vancouver, Canada, but spent over 10 years on the east coast, mainly in Boston and New York Lab: Clayton Foundation Laboratories for Peptide Biology of Alan Saghatelian Lab website: https://saghatelian.salk.edu/ Hobbies:  Boardgames! What do you study? I am interested in how our body store and use the energy we eat. In humans […]

Name: Hank Bradford Hometown: Carlsbad, CA Hobbies: Volleyball, guitar, cooking, and fly fishing Lab: Farah Sheikh Lab, UC San Diego What do you study? My lab studies a disease that can cause young athletes’ hearts to stop working. We try to understand why certain people get this disease and think of ways to help them […]

Name: YenRu Pan Hometown: Taiwan Department: Cell Line Development Company website: https://www.gilead.com/ Hobbies: Any activities with family and friends! Coloring with my son, gardening with my husband, hiking with friends What do you do? I build cell lines that produce therapeutic biologics. Why is it important? My work addresses medical needs and helps advance and improve patient care. What […]

Name: Ana Marie Palanca Hometown: Los Angeles, CA (Born in Manila, Philippines) Lab: Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory of Julie Law Lab website: https://law.salk.edu/ Hobbies:  I enjoy baking, cooking, gardening, traveling and doing puzzles (all kinds) What do you study? I study epigenetic changes in the DNA. An epigenetic change is when something modifies how a gene is expressed […]

Name: Brittany Fair Hometown: Palo Alto, California Department: Communications, Salk Institute Website: www.brittanydfair.com  Hobbies: triathlon, rock climbing and horseback riding What do you study? I am a science communicator based in San Diego. I currently work at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where I write articles for Inside Salk magazine and press releases for upcoming scientific papers. […]

Name: Hetika Vora Hometown: Orange County, CA Lab: Neal Devaraj Lab, UC San Diego Lab website:  https://www.devarajgroup.com/ Hobbies: Dancing, concerts, traveling What do you study? Cancer, specifically post-translational modifications (PTMs) on proteins mutated in cancer. About one-third of all human cancers have mutations in the Ras family of proteins, but there are currently no treatments. For my research, I have […]

Name: Orion McCarthy Hometown: Takoma Park, MD Lab: Dr. Jennifer Smith’s Lab, Scripps Institution of Oceanography Lab website: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/labs/coralreefecology/ Hobbies: Pottery, SCUBA diving, hiking, cooking What do you study? I use virtual reality to study coral reefs. We visit coral reefs around the world and take thousands of underwater pictures of each reef. When we get back on […]

Name: Kim Pelak Hometown: Minneapolis, Minnesota Position: Product Manager at Illumina Company website: https://www.illumina.com/  Hobbies: Skiing, Hiking, Biking, Running, Cooking, Spending time with family and friends What do you study? I am working on building new products that use genomics to help people who are sick.  The product I am working on right now is a product to help […]

Name: Xinzhu Zhou Hometown: Chengdu, China Hobbies: Baking, hiking, crafting Lab: Palmer Lab @UCSD Lab website: https://palmerlab.org What do you do/study? I study complex diseases such as psychiatric disorders and drug abuse. I conduct studies where I analyze genotype and phenotype data collected for a mouse population and locate genes that show significant contribution to […]