Fujifilm Fellowship Program

I was originally born and raised in Connecticut and did my undergrad at Bowdoin College. I worked at a biotech company for a couple of years after graduation doing antibody discovery. I came to Harvard because of the scientific community and opportunities. 

Hopefully, some of the tools I’ve contributed to developing so far in my PhD studies can be used for derisking/identifying tractable targets for TPD drug development. I can’t elaborate on my current work, but it is focused on addressing unmet needs pertaining to a variety of biologics that are either currently in the clinic or under investigation. 

I was surprised and grateful!

I grew up in Bamako, Mali, and moved to Manhattan, Kansas, to complete my undergraduate degree at Kansas State University. As an undergraduate student, I participated in multiple research projects ranging from protein structure determination to small molecule synthesis and protein design. I decided to join Harvard Medical School for my PhD because of the highly collaborative and supportive research atmosphere.

The recent successes with vaccine development against SARS-CoV-2 have highlighted the unparalleled potential that mRNA vaccines have to offer. Along with these successes, several key challenges have come to light with regard to mRNA stability and its potential use as a therapeutic agent. In particular, the cold chain manufacturing process and the complex lipid-nanoparticle encapsulation process present obstacles that limit the worldwide distribution of the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines and the expansion of mRNA therapeutics broadly. My projects in the Shih Lab focus on addressing some of these challenges using nucleic acid origami technology.

I was incredibly excited and honored to learn that I had been selected as a Fujifilm Fellow. I am deeply grateful to Fujifilm for their support of not only my research project, but therapeutics research as a whole.

I am originally from eastern Pennsylvania. I first moved to Massachusetts to pursue my undergraduate degree at UMass Amherst. I then moved to Boston and spent three years studying mechanistic lipid biology in cellular and disease models, which led me to pursue my PhD at Harvard, exploring mechanisms of fatty acid metabolism. 

Dysregulation of fatty acid metabolism induces metabolic syndrome, which can lead to the development of many associated pathologies such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and chronic kidney disease. My research aims to identify modulators of fatty acid metabolism, specifically compounds that may protect the body from fatty acid-induced stress.

I am honored and enthusiastic to have been named a Fujifilm Fellow. I am excited to have the support of Fujifilm in my efforts to produce strong therapeutically driven research.

I was born and raised in the Boston area and pursued my neuroscience bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Brandeis University. During my undergraduate training, I worked in the lab of Dr. Eve Marder, studying the adaptation mechanisms of a neural circuit to global perturbations. I decided to join the neuroscience PhD program at HMS because of the program’s long history, the training opportunities it offers, and the School’s integration with Boston’s hub of life science innovation. 

My research can improve our understanding of the function of voltage-gated calcium channels, which are involved in numerous critical physiological functions such as muscle operation in both skeletal and cardiac systems and cellular processing in brain regions like the cerebellum. Findings from my work can inform the mechanistic understanding of the impact of genetic mutations involving calcium channels as well as the development of treatments for cardiac-related illnesses. 

I was pleasantly surprised and felt honored when I heard that I had been named a Fujifilm Fellow. I am truly grateful to Fujifilm for their support of my research and of life sciences and therapeutic innovation at HMS.

Originally from Oregon, I pursued undergraduate studies in biochemistry at Northwestern University and researched bacterial methane oxidation in Dr. Amy Rosenzweig’s lab. After graduating, I spent a two-year postbaccalaureate fellowship studying bacterial membrane biogenesis in the lab of Dr. Susan Buchanan at the National Institutes of Health. I then worked in drug discovery at a couple of biotechnology companies in California before returning to academia to pursue my PhD at HMS. 

My hope is that the tools I’m developing in my PhD studies will not only prove useful to investigate my specific research topics, such as GPCR ligand recognition, but will be broadly applicable and robust such that they can be used by other research groups studying a wide variety of biological questions. The ultimate measure of success would be if these tools could be used to discover or engineer molecules that confer therapeutic benefits.

I was honored and grateful to be selected, and I look forward to continuing my thesis research with the support of Fujifilm, the Therapeutics Graduate Program, and the community of other fellows.

I am from Little Rock, Arkansas. I did my undergraduate studies at Dartmouth College, and I have a master’s from Paris Descartes University in Paris, France.

Fifty percent of lactating parents struggle to make enough milk for their infants, and I am designing protein therapeutics to increase lactation.

I was really excited and grateful.

I grew up in Chongqing, China, and went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for undergrad. In undergrad, I got opportunities to be involved in gut microbiome research and wanted to keep exploring the area, but with more of a biological focus at the interface of host-microbial interactions. There are just so many exciting ongoing research at HMS in this area, which is why I’m here!

I’m really interested in developing therapeutics for infectious diseases, particularly those of microbial or viral origins. By researching and gaining a deeper understanding of the chemical mechanisms and biological impacts, I hope to connect diseases’ molecular details with therapeutic development. 

I was very surprised, honestly, but a burst of joy followed! It’s my honor to be named a Fujifilm Fellow and I really appreciate the opportunity!

I primarily grew up in Orange County, California, before moving to the Boston area for my undergraduate studies at Harvard College. After attaining my bachelor’s degree in molecular and cellular biology, I worked as a data scientist at nference, a biotechnology startup. Having mainly done research in computational biology before graduate school, I decided to pursue a PhD at HMS to gain more experience in benchwork and experimental biology.

Despite their central role in a number of malignancies, transcription factors have long been considered to be undruggable by small-molecule inhibitors. The Fischer Lab studies how a class of small molecules called molecular glues can co-opt the protein homeostasis machinery of cells to degrade transcription factors. By using cryo-EM in conjunction with other structural biology and biochemical techniques, I hope to uncover additional mechanisms by which we can perturb the stability and function of this important class of drug targets.

I was very excited when I was notified about the Fujifilm Fellowship program. I am honored that Fujifilm will be supporting my research, and grateful for the company’s commitment to rigorous scientific training and innovative scholarship.

I’m originally from Oregon, studied biochemistry in Utah, and completed a post-baccalaureate fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland. Before graduate school, I studied cell signaling in cancer and immune cells. Over time, I also discovered an interest in understanding how drugs work and how new drugs are developed. Coming to Harvard’s chemical biology program was the perfect opportunity to expand on those interests and pursue exciting projects in therapeutic science. 

My research could reveal new sites or pockets on cancer-associated proteins. These sites could then be targeted in future drug development campaigns. Proteins are often studied in isolation, which ignores the fact that most proteins exist in complexes that tightly control protein function. By studying proteins in a more natural context, we can discover new mechanisms that regulate these proteins and perhaps mimic these mechanisms with chemical compounds or drugs. 

I was so grateful to be selected as a Fujifilm Fellow. Having secure funding for my third year allows me to focus on my research and gives me flexibility in the questions I ask and the experiments I design. I’m glad that Fujifilm has consistently supported important life science research by funding graduate students like me.