Wet lab and computational work on cancer biology, with a growing focus on what saliva can reveal about disease elsewhere in the body.
I joined Dr. Richard Moffitt's pancreatic cancer lab in 2023 as a high-school intern and have kept working there since. I run two independent projects.
Which cells and genes separate a benign PanIN lesion from malignant PDAC? I merged public scRNA-seq data from Kras-mutant mouse models (Burdziak et al., 2023), normalized and clustered them in Seurat, and annotated five cell populations. PDAC cells concentrated in the epithelial cluster and PanIN cells in the acinar-to-ductal metaplasia cluster. Ten genes were elevated in PDAC, spanning invasion, mesenchymal transition, and metabolism.
Can saliva flag cancers far from the mouth, like pancreatic and lung? I'm screening human diagnostic-accuracy studies of salivary miRNAs, grading each for bias with QUADAS-2, and pooling sensitivity and specificity with random-effects models. Pooling is ongoing. So far, recurrent miRNA signatures show up across cohorts, alongside substantial heterogeneity.
I ran CRISPR gene-editing experiments in HEK293 cells to study the Ras superfamily, with a focus on ARL proteins. The work covered cell culture and passaging, genomic DNA extraction, PCR amplification, and gel electrophoresis.
Presenting the PDAC project to national and regional audiences.
Abstract accepted for "Understanding progression between neoplasia and malignancy of PDAC through single-cell RNA sequencing data," with Jason Yoo and Richard Moffitt.
21st Annual AACR Undergraduate Poster Competition, selected as 1 of 250 undergraduate competitors.
Georgia Undergraduate Research Conference, with over 400 student presenters.
Harvard National Collegiate Research Conference: PDAC project.
Programming on clinical preparedness, leadership in organized dentistry, and admissions.