2020–2021 Cohort

After growing up in Los Angeles, California, I moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to attend Carnegie Mellon University, where I studied biological chemistry, politics, and public policy. Inspired by the intellectual diversity of the Harvard scientific community, I chose to pursue my doctoral work in the Chemical Biology PhD Program, where I could explore my interests in therapeutic development across many techniques, disciplines, and institutional frameworks.

Due to their pharmacological availability at the cell surface and diverse signaling capabilities, G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) serve as the targets for roughly one-third of all FDA-approved therapeutics. My thesis work focuses on a highly unusual class of GPCRs that are responsible for cell adhesion in many biological contexts and resulting in disease states, including cancer, ADHD, and developmental disorders of the nervous system. To date, however, no drugs have been generated that target these Adhesion GPCRs. My project aims to characterize the basic mechanisms by which these receptors turn on and off, to identify potential ways to modulate their activities with novel therapeutics.

I was absolutely humbled and honored to hear that I was selected as a Fujifilm Fellow. It is immensely heartening to know that an organization of leading scientific minds and industrial leaders has chosen to put a direct stake in not only my thesis work but also my future in this amazing scientific community that I have only recently become a part of.

I grew up in Switzerland, where I completed my bachelor’s and master’s degree in Nanoscience at the University of Basel. Nanoscience is an interdisciplinary course of studies that combines biology, chemistry, and physics. During my master’s, I did several research projects in chemistry and microbiology, which further deepened my interdisciplinary background. One of these projects was in the lab of Thomas Bernhardt at Harvard Medical School. It was during this project that I got fascinated by the mechanisms behind bacterial growth and cell division. Given the thrilling experience at HMS, and the nourishing and highly collaborative environment, I decided to pursue a PhD in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program here at Harvard.

The rise of antibiotic resistance makes bacterial infections harder to treat as an increasing amount of antibiotics become less effective. This leads to increased mortality, morbidity, and increased health care costs due to bacterial infections. To stop this emerging global health crisis, it is important to develop new therapeutics that are effective against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Since bacterial cell division is an essential step in the bacterial life cycle and the mechanisms are very different from that in human cells, cell division is an interesting target for new antibiotics. Understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying bacterial cell division is crucial to find new methods for the treatment of diseases and the development of antibiotics.

I was very honored to be named a Fujifilm Fellow, and I’m looking forward to continuing my scientific endeavors as part of the Fujifilm Fellowship. I’m very grateful for FUJIFILM’s contribution towards life sciences and education.

I am from Lusaka, Zambia, and I came to the United States to pursue a higher education. I attended Paine College in Augusta, Georgia, where I studied biology. During my undergraduate training, I had the opportunity to conduct research in laboratories at my home campus, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR). After graduating from college, I was selected for the Post-Baccalaureate Scholars Program at NIBR, where I studied pulmonary epithelial cell biology for two years. After two years of research experience in pulmonary biology, I decided to pursue a doctoral degree in the PhD Program in Biological Sciences in Public Health (BPH). In particular, I chose the BPH program because it offered a holistic training in biomedical research to tackle global health challenges.

Worldwide, asthma affects more than 350 million people. While advances in diagnosis and therapeutic management have been made, asthma remains a progressive disease with no cure. Because poorly controlled asthma is significantly associated with high mortality and morbidity, developing new drugs and therapeutic strategies is readily needed.

To advance our knowledge about the cause and development of asthma and to find potential drug targets, my research focuses on the pulmonary epithelium. Under normal conditions, the pulmonary epithelium serves as a protective physical barrier. It is the first line of defense against inhaled external insults such as environmental pollutants, allergens, and viruses, all of which are major risk factors for asthma. Repeated insults could eventually damage the pulmonary epithelium, which contributes to the development of asthma. In my work, I am investigating how external stimuli, such as allergens, compromise the normal defense function of the pulmonary epithelium, contributing to the progression of asthma. Understanding the role of the airway epithelium presents potential therapeutic targets for the development of new drugs and/or new therapeutic strategies for the treatment of asthma.

I was very excited and honored to be named a Fujifilm Fellow. I am grateful for the financial support from FUJIFILM Corporation.

I was born and brought up in southwestern India and moved to the United States to pursue a master’s degree in Biotechnology from Northwestern University, located in the beautiful city of Chicago. After graduation, I worked in a viral oncology laboratory at Northwestern as a Research Technician for a few years before starting my PhD at Harvard as part of the HMS PhD Program in Virology. I chose Harvard because of its emphasis on translational research and deep expertise in the development of therapeutics, in addition to being in Boston, which has become a hub of innovation in the life sciences industry.

Recent DNA sequencing efforts have revealed frequent perturbations in genes encoding members of the BAF complex family. We now know that dysregulation of chromatin architecture is implicated as a cause in many diseases, most prominently cancer. The overarching goal of my research is to leverage this information to gain insight into disease biology and reveal targets for therapeutic intervention. It is my hope that my work will contribute to the development of potent therapeutics to treat genetic diseases.

I am excited and honored to be named a Fujifilm Fellow. I’m thankful to FUJIFILM for their support and hope they continue doing the same to others in the future.

I am a second-year graduate student in the virology program. I grew up in Hong Kong and pursued my undergraduate studies in The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), where I majored in biotechnology and minored in bioengineering. I continued with a research master at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), where my research focused on understanding the lytic reactivation mechanism of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). I joined the virology program at Harvard to continue researching on viruses because of its highly collaborative and supportive environment.

EBV is an oncovirus that persistently infects >95% of adults worldwide. It is associated with multiple human malignancies, with nearly 200,000 cancers attributable to EBV each year worldwide. These include Burkitt lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma, HIV-associated lymphomas, post-transplant lymphoproliferative diseases, immune-senescence-associated lymphomas, nasopharyngeal, and gastric carcinomas. Upon infection of primary B lymphocytes, EBV enters a state of viral latency but is hardly quiescent. Rather, EBV expresses oncogenic membrane proteins, transcription factors, and microRNAs that efficiently transform resting B-lymphocytes into rapidly growing lymphoblasts. Although there has been a lot of research since its discovery, there are still many unknowns in the field. By constructing the inter- and intra- viral-host protein interactome, we could explore the functions of each of the viral proteins and understand how they lead to tumorigenesis, thus fostering the development of therapeutics against EBV-specific tumor cells.

I was very excited and honored to be named as a Fujifilm Fellow. It is very encouraging, and I am looking forward to future research experiences and to share my findings with the community.