Research

I work on learned representations of biological state, ie how you get from molecular measurements (variants, proteins, metabolites) to a trait or a disease course, and what a model has to see for that answer to be trustworthy.

The long term goal is molecularly grounded models of how disease progresses in an individual, transferring across cohorts, populations, and scales of biology.

  1. Oct 2025 - now
    Research Intern

    Talmo Lab · Salk Institute for Biological Studies

    Talmo LabSalk Institute
    • Developed a protein-embedding association method that uses ESM embeddings to predict Arabidopsis phenotypes from genotype.
    • Built and validated the GWAS → ML pipeline used as the method's classical baseline.

    Advised by Talmo Pereira and Todd Michael.

    ESMGWASDeep learningPlant genomics
  2. Sep 2025 - now
    Undergraduate Researcher

    Majithia Lab · UCSD School of Medicine

    UC San Diego School of Medicine
    • Identified metabolomic signatures distinguishing 20-year prediabetes progression trajectories in the Diabetes Prevention Program.
    • Built the analysis pipeline over 42,000 LC-MS features; findings replicated in independent cohorts.

    Advised by Amit Majithia.

    MetabolomicsLC-MSDiabetesStatistics
  3. May 2025 - Oct 2025
    Program Fellow

    AI4ALL Ignite Accelerator · AI4ALL

    AI4ALL
    • Feature engineering, class-imbalance correction, and multi-model evaluation on voice recordings.
    • Selected (top 10 of 400+ students) to present at the AI4ALL Student Symposium.
    Machine learningHealthcare AI
  4. Oct 2024 - Oct 2025
    Undergraduate Researcher

    DVJ Lab · UCSD Bioengineering

    UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
    • Investigated mechano-signaling in PAH fibroblasts; performed RNA isolation, qPCR, and gene expression analysis.
    • Assisted in rat pulmonary artery harvest for collagen assays.

    Advised by Daniela Valdez-Jasso.

    BioengineeringCell biologyqPCR
  5. Jan 2021 - Oct 2022
    Team Lead & Researcher

    iGEM · International Genetically Engineered Machine

    iGEM
    • Led the team, coordinated milestones, and took part in the wet-lab work.
    • Engineered mycosporine-like amino acids (MAA) in S. cerevisiae as a sustainable sunscreen.
    • International Gold Medal and five award nominations.
    Synthetic biologyLeadershipiGEM Gold