PhD Candidate with MCDBG Program | Master's Candidate with BICB
I'm a PhD candidate with the MCDBG program and master's candidate with BICB, advised by Dr. Matthew Gill and co-advised by Dr. Chad Myers.
Because aging and life extension are such complicated processes, and honing in on a single target is so challenging, I am taking a top-down, phenotype-centric approach to drug discovery with C. elegans for my thesis project.
On one front, I have developed a scalable, deep-learning based imaging assay to screen for drugs that increase heat stress resistance in worms. Previous studies have shown that interventions that increase resistance to acute thermal damage may become strong candidates for life extension; they may have other roles in a future with rising average global temperatures, as well.
My other focus is utilizing pro-longevity drug screen data (both my own, and other studies) to build predictive machine-learning models to find more optimal drugs from large chemical spaces, which can be validated with laboratory experiments. I have projects involving both life-extending drugs in worms, and senotherapeutics (in collaboration with the Robbins Lab). Furthermore, I have developed models for understanding and predicting life extending drugs using chemical-genomic data (MOSAIC) as a member of the Myers Lab.
My broader long-term goal is to discover or engineer interventions that can extend human lifespan and health above baseline.
