People

Matt is a clinical fellow in allergy and immunology at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He has been studying the immune system since he was an undergraduate at Harvard University, where he worked on the role of NKT cells in asthma with Dale Umetsu. He received his MD and PhD in immunology at Duke University in the labs of Carol Colton and Michael Dee Gunn, where he identified a novel immune-mediated mechanism in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease that is being explored in a clinical trial. Matt studied computational immunology during a postdoctoral fellowship with Atul Butte at UCSF and completed his residency training in pediatrics at UCSF. His clinical focus is on inborn errors in immunity and he is designing CRISPR/Cas-based gene therapy for patients with primary immune deficiencies.

Jason is a postdoctoral fellow at the Gladstone Institutes studying SARS-CoV-2 proteins and protein structures. He received his PhD in virology at Harvard, where he studied tumor microbiomes and viral transcriptomes in the labs of James DeCaprio and Matthew Meyerson.

Amanda is a postdoctoral scholar working jointly with the Rubin and Doudna lab on the BiomeForge project to develop and apply microbiome editing tools in environmentally relevant microbial communities. As a joint PhD student at San Diego State University and the University of California San Diego, Amanda established genetic tractability in several environmental isolates of marine bacteria important for symbiosis. She is now applying microbial community editing techniques to lignin degrading bacterial communities with support from JBEI. Furthermore, she aims to improve the maintenance and enrichment of successfully edited microbes in this system by establishing methods for positive metabolic selection.

Wayne is a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences studying the targeting of CRISPR-Cas delivery vehicles. He aims to deliver CRISPR-Cas systems to specific tissues for therapeutic applications. Wayne received his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at the University of Toronto, where he studied the delivery of nanoparticles to solid tumors with Prof. Warren Chan.

Bel is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Doudna Lab interested in chromatin editing and RNA mechanisms. Originally from Spain, she moved to the UK to study Biochemistry and Music at Imperial College London and at the Royal College of Music. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), where she studied DNA structure function under the supervision of Prof. Sir Shankar Balasubramanian and Dr. David Tannahill. Bel discovered a new molecular mechanism for the critical MYC oncogene, in which DNA structure orchestrates transcriptional programmes and dictates chromatin architecture to regulate gene expression. Previously, she conducted research in biophysics at Harvard University with Dr. Howard C. Berg, and worked on microfluidics and the development of novel technologies.

Ron is a Biophysics PhD student in the Doudna Lab, interested in computation and biology. Previously, Ron was a research scientist at GoogleX, where he led projects and research spanning life sciences, machine learning, and quantum computing. He helped build the machine learning team at System1 Biosciences, leading the analysis of multi-omics and imaging datasets to identify phenotypes of neuropsychiatric diseases in cerebral organoids. He earned his BS and MS in Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, where he conducted machine learning research as part of the VisionLab and started the nonprofit MedHacks.

As a senior research scientist, I have extensive biological research experiences in molecular and cellular biology in plants, E. coli, yeasts, viruses, mammalian, and human diseases such as autoimmune, glaucoma and hyperbilirubinemia. This has increased my ability to perform many different types of research approaches. With this vast experience, I have joined Dr. Doudna’s lab as a project scientist in order to accomplish my career goal that is to contribute my experience to improve gene therapy through gene editing such as CRISPR-CAS9.

In this lab, I will focus on the in vivo CRISPR-CAS system by which we will figure out how to deliver our gene therapy complex to tissues/organs, specifically and precisely.

In addition, I have realized that people working together is most important. So I have a motto  ‘work together, make together’ is the best way to move forward and make good progress. Furthermore, I always keep in mind for work progress ‘Let it happen? Make it happen!

Alex is an IGI Translational Health Fellow at the Doudna Lab and UCSF Memory and Aging Center with Bruce Miller interested in neurodegenerative disease pathophysiology and therapeutic development. He has been studying Alzheimer’s disease since he was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley where he researched patterns of selective vulnerability in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease under the mentorship of Lea Grinberg at UCSF. He completed his PhD also at UC Berkeley where he expanded this work to identifying mechanisms underlying patterns of vulnerability in Alzheimer’s disease and stress disorders under the mentorship of Daniela Kaufer. Alex’s work now leverages his training in neuropathology, cell biology, and molecular neuroscience to improve neurodegenerative disease treatments with CRISPR-based therapeutics.

Alana is an undergraduate at UC Berkeley (’25) studying Molecular and Cell Biology with an intended emphasis in Genetics, Genomics, and Development. She grew up in Los Angeles and currently lives in Taiwan, but the Bay Area is her favorite place to live so far.

Hello! My name is Alex Tong and I’m an undergraduate student studying chemistry in a premed-PhD track. I enjoy snowboarding, playing volleyball, and rock climbing!

Sophie is a Berkeley undergraduate student (’27) studying microbial biology in the pre-medicine track. She is originally from Seattle, Washington and enjoys crocheting, climbing, and Legos.