Research, clinic & teaching

DNA nanostructures represent a frontier in targeted drug delivery; their interactions with innate immune pathways — specifically regarding oxidative stress — remain largely unknown. This study establishes a foundation for DNA-based nanotherapies by evaluating how oxidative stress influences the inflammatory phenotype.

My honors thesis work showed that SOD2 overexpression shifts basal gene signatures away from an IL-1 response and toward a TNF-α / MMP-1 response, which reframes what “baseline inflammation” means for any nanocarrier evaluated in this system.

Objectives

1. Characterize the inflammatory phenotype triggered by oxidative stress as a baseline for nano-therapy evaluation.
2. Investigate the role of Superoxide Dismutase 2 (SOD2) in modulating cellular inflammatory signaling.
3. Quantify expression of key pro-inflammatory cytokines in response to H₂O₂-induced stress.

The Elongating Multi-Lineage Organized Cardiac (EMLOC) gastruloid recapitulates trunk, neural axis and cardiogenesis together — but its vasculature stays superficial, and without an internal network the core starves past the 400–500 µm diffusion limit, capping myocardial wall thickness and maturity.

My whitepaper for Dr. Paluh proposed moving vascular induction out of the differentiation stage and into aggregation: titrated BMP4 with VEGF from day 0, so vascular progenitors co-develop with the neuro-cardiac lineages instead of being added late. Vasculogenesis first — a real primary plexus — then angiogenic remodeling, rather than the disorganized sprouting that late VEGF tends to produce.

Three aims carry it: a BMP4 dose and VEGF-timing screen against the base protocol; confocal z-stacking and scRNA-seq to test vascular depth, density, and whether arterial and venous populations appear; and microfluidic shear stress to ask whether the vessels mature under flow.

Neural circuitry of fear conditioning and memory consolidation: behavioral trials across animal cohorts, tissue harvesting, and data analysis. My first bench training, and where the trial-and-error of research stopped being abstract.