Last May, I graduated with a master's in Biomedical Engineering (BME) from University of Michigan - Ann Arbor.
My degree concentrated in biotechnology, and since graduating, I've continued working as a Research Assistant in the Moon Lab,
developing immunomodulatory theraputics for autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases.
I'm deeply motivated by health inequities rooted in both biology and circumstance — the reality that individuals have little control over the bodies they are given or the resources they are born into. The desire to counteract these imbalances stemming from nature and chance is what drives me to work
towards the personal goal of enabling more people to live their life to the fullest.
Previously, I completed my bachelor's in BME at UMich and *found my lost soul* traveling on the weekends around SEA during an exchange semester at NUS in Singapore.
I also love connecting with people, foreign languages, board games, ice cream, natural light, and listening to the Huberman Lab podcast when I mealprep :D
The first ever biotech class I took involved writing a mock Small Business Investigational Research (SBIR) proposal. For the team's literature review, I focused on optimizing lipid nanoparticles for specific cargo delivery to CD4+ T cells, including choice of LNP components as well as efficacy testing and potential pitfalls + alterantive approaches.
For one of my bioengineering courses at NUS, I proposed the design and testing protocol of a nucleic acid lateral flow assay device using upregulated lncRNA-NEAT 1 and downregulated microRNA-217 with the end-goal of asthma detection in pediatric patients.
For my most heavily electrical engineering themed course, my team focused on addressing the hardships of life experienced by people with anosmia - a condition that causes one to lose sense of smell. This leaves the suffering individuals vulnerable to potential dangers such as gas leaks and fires. I prototyped a wearable gas-detecting controlled system of electronics (including a MQ2 gas sensor, an LED diode, a vibration motor and a speaker), using C++ to code an Arduino board.
For my senior design project, worked in a team to ideate a non-invasive glucose monitoring device using NIR light to improve patient compliance. Developed a regression model from manual glucose measurements and the PPG signal - obtained using prototyped breadboard circuitry and processed in LabVIEW - to get the readout. This coursework project was very much going through a product design pipeline with stakeholder interviews, scoping out user needs, formulating design requirements and specifications, and prototyping specific parts of the device for user testing by the end of the semester.
Wanted to try out consulting; ended up taking a client-based course, and got matched with the UofM School of Nursing Healthcare Innovation Impact Program (HiiP) with the goal to bring a product to support the participating nurse innovators in getting their products to market. Conducted stakeholder interviews and led a team to create a marketing starter toolkit, concluding with a presentation on the most insightful findings in front of the Executive Board.
I care about women’s health and equitable access to health care. As an undergrad, I joined M-HEAL (Michigan Health Engineered For All Lives) and became a part of Project MIA. Partnered with an indigenous community of Kashibo Cocha in Peru, we aimed to provide them with a DYI sustainable menstrual pad with locally-sourced banana fiber insert to allow the girls and women to participate in their daily lives without any constraints. Working on the design team, I proposed iterations of the pad prototype, learned to sew, and carried out mesh layer testing.
I’m big on giving back and community building. I made some of my first friends in college through mentorship program email exchanges before coming to campus. Subsequently, for 2 years in college, I was on the board and later ran a student organization aiming to make incoming international students feel more prepared for life at UMich. It took a lot of match-making and organization, and I like to think that some of the friendships formed as part of the program survived until now.
In COVID, I launched and organized an online FB series of facilitated guest speaker lectures on physics to make science concepts not usually taught in school more accessible to teens and adults alike. The most-watched lecture with Andrzej Dragan came at over 8.4k views.