Gina Borgo: PhD Candidate, UCB SPH Infectious Disease and Immunity Program; Welch Lab

Gina is a PhD student in infectious diseases and has spent most of her research career trying to understand how pathogens make humans sick. She is excited to be part of the multidisciplinary team at RR:C19 and hope that it will be a helpful resource for the scientific community, decision-makers, and the general public.

Jordan Baker: PhD Candidate, UCSF-UCB Joint Graduate Program in Bioengineering; Dueber Lab; Innovative Genomics Institute

Jordan is a 3rd year Bioengineering graduate student in John Dueber's lab working to engineer peroxisomes into fully controllable organelles for sustainable and environmentally friendly metabolic engineering and synthetic biology applications. Outside of lab, Jordan enjoys cooking, playing soccer, and hiking with his dog.

Chris Mathy: PhD Candidate, UCSF-UCB Joint Graduate Program in Bioengineering; Kortemme Lab, Department of Bioengineering & Therapeutic Sciences, UCSF

Chris is a fifth-year PhD student studying how cellular pathways respond differently to mutations in a central regulator protein, using both biophysical and systems approaches. He is interested in the ways proteins are optimized for processes that span the molecular, cellular, and tissue scales, and hopes to bring this perspective while assessing the SARS-CoV-2 body of literature.

Alla Peselis: PhD, Molecular Biophysics, NYU School of Medicine

Alla’s graduate research focused on understanding the molecular structure of bacterial RNA elements called riboswitches, which are involved in fundamental biological processes and have potential as antibacterial targets or tools in biotechnology. Since graduating, she has transitioned to a strategy role in the medical and scientific affairs department of the healthcare advertising agency CDM.

Olivia Kern: PhD Candidate, Pathobiology at the University of Washington

Olivia Kern is an incoming PhD student in the Pathobiology program at the University of Washington. She studied Biological Sciences and French at Wellesley College. Since graduation, she has spent a year as a Fulbright research fellow studying the epidemiology of urinary schistosomiasis in Togo, and two years as a postbaccalaureate research fellow at the NIH, where she studies mosquito salivary proteins with the goal of developing novel transmission-blocking strategies for vector-borne diseases.

Leah Gulyas: PhD Candidate, UC Berkeley Plant and Microbial Biology Department; Glaunsinger Lab

Leah’s graduate work in the Glaunsinger lab focuses on how gammaherpesviruses interact with and exploit the mammalian host, particularly transcriptional dynamics.

Morgan Burt: PhD Candidate, Department of Biomedical Engineering and Nephrology, Duke University

Morgan is a third-year Biomedical Engineering PhD student and NSF GRFP fellow in the Musah Lab at Duke University. Her research lies at the intersection of synthetic biology and regenerative medicine, in which she is engineering gene circuits to re-wire mammalian cell injury response, with a particular focus in developing targeted therapeutics to treat chronic kidney disease.

Lucas Spangher: 4th year PhD student, Dept of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; RAISE lab (Research in AI for Sustainable Energy)

Lucas' currently researches artificial intelligence for improving energy demand response incentives under the direction of Costas Spanos. Lucas holds a Bachelors in Statistics from Duke University and in the past has worked as a data scientist for the Dept of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E), Google Ventures, and non-profits in India and Brazil.  

Djamila Lou: PhD student, UC Berkeley, Material Science and Engineering

Djamila earned her B.S. in Nanoscience at Virginia Tech, focusing on research in biophysics and soft phonon dynamics in the terahertz frequency. She now studies pyroelectrics and energy conversion materials as a Graduate Student Researcher at UC Berkeley.

Alok Tripathy: PhD student, UC Berkeley Dept of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Alok Tripathy is a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley interested in scaling graph deep learning on large-scale supercomputers.

Peisheng He: PhD candidate, UC Berkeley Graduate Program in Mechanical Engineering (MEMS/Nano)

I am a third-year Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley. I am passionate about biosensors, flexible/stretchable electronics, batteries, microfabrication and the way these technologies can change our lives for the better. 

Zhenni Lin: PhD Candidate, UC Berkeley Department of Materials Science and Engineering; Yang Group

Zhenni Lin is a Materials Science and Engineering PhD candidate at UC Berkeley interested in renewable energy. Her research focuses on understanding the impact of environmental stressors on the materials properties of semiconductors.

Arthur Bookstein: MD Candidate, USC Keck School of Medicine

Arthur Bookstein graduated from UC Berkeley in 2018 with degrees in Molecular & Cell Biology, Public Health, and minors in Bioengineering and Conservation & Resource Studies. He graduated from UC Berkeley School of Public Health in 2020 with an MPH emphasizing Biostatistics and Epidemiology, and is currently a first-year medical student at USC Keck School of Medicine.

Maria Dieci: PhD Candidate, Health Policy at UC Berkeley

Maria Dieci, is a PhD Candidate in Health Policy at UC Berkeley, who reasearches global health and development economics, with current focus on malaria care and early childhood health. She has an MA in Economics from UC Berkeley, and a BA in Social Studies from Harvard University

Carlos Martinez: PhD Candidate, Joint Program in Medical Anthropology at UC Berkeley and UCSF

Carlos Martinez, MPH is a UC President’s Pre-Professoriate Fellow and PhD candidate in the joint program in Medical Anthropology at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco. His research focuses on migrant and refugee health, post-deportation life, coloniality, captivity, and structural vulnerability in the United States and Latin America. His current project examines the intersecting and contradictory logics of care and violence ensnaring Mexican deportees and Central American refugees in the US/Mexico borderlands, along with the emerging forms of mutual aid and social solidarity. His research has been supported by the Ford Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation.

Israel Kates: MPH Candidate, Global Epidemiology at Emory University

Israel Kates has a BS in Behavioral and Community Health from University of Maryland, May 2018

He is currently an MPH candidate in Global Epidemiology from Emory University, and will graduate in May 2021.

Oren Samet: PhD Candidate, Political Science Department at UC Berkeley

Oren Samet is currently a PhD student in the Political Science Department at Berkeley. He received a BA in Public and International Affairs from Princeton.

Estefany Rodriguez: MPH Candidate, Epidemiology at UC Berkeley

Estefany Rodriguez is an MPH Candidate in Epidemiology at UC Berkeley, and has a B.A. in Public Health from UC Berkeley.

Jeeyun Kim: SM, Epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Jeeyun Kim has an SM, Epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and graduated with a BA from UC Berkeley.

José Luis Rosado: PhD Candidate, Anthropology Department at UC Berkeley

José Luis Rosado has a B.S. in Biochemistry and a B.A. in Anthropology (Syracuse University ‘17), and a M.A. in Anthropology (UC Berkeley ‘19). He is currently in the Anthropology PhD program of Berkeley, with an emphasis in Bioarchaeology.

Tyler Chervo: MPH Candidate, Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at UC Berkeley

Tyler Chervo has a a B.S in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Nevada, Reno, and is a second year MPH student with a concentration in Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at UC Berkeley.

Bunyong Dejanipont: MA Candidate, Social Research Methodologies at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education

Bunyong Dejanipont is a graduate student in the Social Research Methodologies MA program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education. His research focuses on measurement, evaluation, and applied statistics. He earned bachelor’s degrees in biomedical engineering (B.S.) and psychology (B.S.) and minors in mechanical and energy engineering and mathematics at the University of North Texas.

Cynthia Armour: MPH, Health and Social Behavior at UC Berkeley

Cynthia Armour has a BA in Politics from UC Santa Cruz, and graduated in 2020 from UC Berkeley with an MPH in Health and Social Behavior and an MCP in Environmental Planning and Healthy Cities. 

Scott Swartz: MD Candidate, UC Berkeley/UCSF Joint Medical Program

Scott is a 3rd-year medical student at the UC Berkeley/UCSF Joint Medical program. He has past research experience in disease ecology and pediatric infectious disease modeling, and is currently researching the relationship between early childhood pesticide exposures and testicular cancer. He has a B.S. in Biology and an M.S. in Environmental Engineering & Science from Stanford University.

Melissa Orellana: BA, Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley

Melissa is a UC Berkeley alumna where she earned a degree in Integrative Biology. She aspires to become a physician in emergency medicine and wishes to reduce and eliminate health inequities in under resourced communities. As a part of RR:19’s medical sciences team, she hopes to keep up with all the potential findings and contribute in advancing the research of SARS-CoV-2 to manage the spread of the pandemic and help care for the communities being impacted.

Connor Bridges: BSE, Operations Research & Financial Engineering at Princeton University

Connor earned his B.S.E. in Operations Research and Financial Engineering from Princeton University, focusing on mathematical models of the influence of socioeconomic and demographic variables on healthcare inequities. He is currently applying to medical school, with a particular interest in social medicine.

Victoria Wong Murray: MHS, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health

Victoria Wong Murray has a B.A. in Biology from Johns Hopkins University and past research and clinical experience in multiple domains, including immunology, vaccine development, psychiatry, emergency medicine, and patient safety. She is currently applying to medical school, with a particular focus on HIV and behavioral medicine.