MSTP Thesis Defenses


Sofia Essayan-Perez
Identification of chemically defined dietary gluten peptides from patients with celiac disease

Lab of  Thomas Südhof, MD, PhD
Program in Neurosciences
Tuesday, May 31,  2022, 12:00 pm
LKSC 130 and via Zoom


Nielson Weng
Identification of chemically defined dietary gluten peptides from patients with celiac disease

Lab of  Chaitan Khosla, PhD
      Department of Chemistry
Friday, May 6,  2022, 3:00 pm
Alway 114 and via Zoom


Adele Xu
Identification of chemically defined dietary gluten peptides from patients with celiac disease

Lab of  Maria Barna, PhD
Department of Genetics
Friday, May 6,  2022, 1:30 pm
LKSC 120 and via Zoom


Francisco Galdos
Stem cell and machine learning approaches for understanding heart field development

Lab of  Sean Wu, MD, PhD
Program in Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine
Monday, May 2,  2022, 3:30 pm
LKSC 120 and via Zoom


Suhas Rao
Building a wiring diagram of the human genome

Labs of  Roger Kornberg, PhD & Erez Lieberman Aiden, PhD
Program in Biophysics
Tuesday, February  15,  2022, 1:00 pm
LKSC 101/102 and via Zoom


Jeffrey Wang
Mapping the whole-brain response to noninvasive neuromodulation: From rodents to humans

Lab of  Raag Airan, MD, PhD
      Program in Biophysics
Monday, December 13,  2021, 1:30 pm
Lucas P083 and via Zoom


Anthony Cordova

Defining the Role of Extracellular cGAMP Signaling in Health and Disease

Lab of Lingyin Li
Cancer Biology Program 
Thursday, September 2, 2021 at 2:00pm
(Via Zoom)


Margaret Guo

Decoding Transcription Regulatory Patterns in Health and Disease 

Labs of P Khavari and R Altman
Biomedical Informatics Graduate Program 
Wednesday, August 18, 2021 at 3:00pm
(Via Zoom)


Shamik Mascharak

Mechanisms of Postnatal Mammalian Skin Regeneration

Lab of Michael Longaker, MD
Program in Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicibne
Monday, July 26, 2021 at 10:00am
(Via Zoom)


Kevin Thomas
Deep learning tools to accelerate knee osteoarthritis research

Lab of  Scott Delp, PhD
      Biomedical Informatics Graduate Program
Wednesday, July 14, 2021, 1:30 pm
(Via Zoom)


Daniel Mokhtari

Developing and Applying Quantitative High-Throughput Microfluidics to Elucidate Enzyme Functional Architecture

Labs of Daniel Herschlag, PhD & Polly Fordyce, PhD
Department of Biochemistry 
Tuesday, July 6, 2021 at 1pm
(Via Zoom)


Madeleine Scott

Mano a Mono: Monocytes Across Disease and Vaccination

Lab of Purvesh Khatri, PhD
Program in Biophysics
Monday, June 7, 2021 at 11am
(Via Zoom)


Akshay Maheshwari

Colloidal Physics Modeling of Biomolecular Behavior to Enable Cell Building

Labs of Drew Endy, PhD & Roseanna Zia, PhD
Department of Bioengineering
Tuesday, June 1, 2021 at 11am
(Via Zoom)


Brian Hsueh

Tools for Dissecting Neural Circuits of Interoception and Autonomic Regulation

Lab of Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD
Program in Neurosciences
Thursday, May 27 at 12pm
(Via Zoom)


Daniel Kim

An Integrative Deep Learning Framework Reveals a Dynamic, Combinatorial Cis-Regulatory Lexicon in Epidermal Differentiation

Labs of Paul Khavari MD, PhD, & Anshul Kundaje, PhD
Program in Biomedical Informatics
Wednesday, May 26, 2021 at 3pm
(Via Zoom)


Ragini Phansalkar

Convergence of Blood Vessel Lineages During Mouse and Human Heart Development

Lab of Kristy Red-Horse, PhD
Department of Genetics
Tuesday, May 18, 2021 at 9am
(Via Zoom)


Amar Mirza

Nuclear Tuning in Basal Cell Carcinoma

Lab of Anthony Oro, MD, PhD
Program in Cancer Biology
April 21, 2021 at 12pm
(Via Zoom)


Benjie Smith

Siglecs: Identifying Glycan Markers of Self 

Lab of Carolyn Bertozzi, PhD
Program in Chemical and Systems Biology
March 22, 2021 at 12pm
(Via Zoom)


Joy He 

Identification and Characterization of Human Neural Stem and Progenitor Cells 

Lab of Irv Weissman, MD
Program in Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine
March 10, 2021 at 10am
(Via Zoom)


Paras Minhas

Immunometabolic Regulation of Inflammation in Aging and Disease

Lab of Katrin Andreasson, MD
Program in Neurosciences
December 14, 2020, 2:00 pm
(Via Zoom)


Luke Pennington

Engineering Protein Complex Disruption: Development of Rapid Acting anti-IgE Inhibitors

Lab of Ted Jardetzky, PhD
Program in Immunology
September 22, 2020, 1:00 pm
(Via Zoom)


Ellie Beam

A data-driven ontology of brain function: Engineered, interrogated, and clinically applied

Lab of Amit Etkin, MD, PhD
Program in Neurosciences
August 13, 2020, 12:00 pm
(Via Zoom)


Akshay Sanghi
A chromatin basis for protein expression in cancer

Lab of  Michael Snyder, PhD
      Department of Genetics
July 29, 2020, 2:00 pm
(Via Zoom)


Katherine McNamara

Quantifying Tumor Evolutionary Dynamics and Predictors of Response in HER2-positive Breast Cancer Treated with Targeted Therapy

Lab of Christina Curtis, PhD
Program in Cancer Biology
June 3, 2020, 2:30 pm
(Via Zoom)


Liana Bonanno

Examining the role of microglia in Niemann-Pick Type C

Lab of Tony Wyss-Coray, PhD
Program in Neurosciences
May 28, 2020, 1:00 pm
(Via Zoom)


Yonglu Che

KRAS regulation by small non-coding RNAs and SNARE proteins

Lab of Paul Khavari, MD, PhD
Program in Cancer Biology
April 1, 2020, 1:00 pm
(Via Zoom)


Leighton Daigh

Putting the brakes on the cell cycle - CDK4/6 inhibition in cellular aging and cancer therapy

Lab of Tobias Meyer, PhD
Department of Chemical and Systems Biology
March 10, 2020, 1:30 pm
Clark Center Auditorium


Stanford Schor

BIKE regulates dengue virus infection via CLINT1 phosphorylation and is a host target for broad-spectrum antivirals

Lab of Shirit Einav, MD
Program in Cancer Biology
March 9, 2020, 9:30 am
Munzer Auditorium


Catherine Yao

Non-canonical Hedgehog signaling mechanisms of resistance in basal cell carcinoma

Lab of Anthony Oro, MD, PhD
Program in Cancer Biology
February 28, 2020, 11:00 am
Clark Center S-360


Yong Tang
A simple genetic approach to investigate the biogenesis of the malarial plastid organelle 

Lab of Ellen Yeh MD, PhD
      Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology
November 19, 2019, 1:30 pm
Munzer Auditorium


César Márquez
Leveraging Protein Evolution to Elucidate Novel Oncogenic Signaling Axes in the Treatment of Lung Adenocarcinoma 

Lab of Alejandro Sweet-Cordero MD, PhD
      Program in Cancer Biology 
September 30, 2019, 3:00 pm
LKSC 130


Gerald Tiu 
Lost in Translation: How Broken Ribosomes Lead to Tissue Specific Phenotypes in Developmental Diseases

Lab of Maria Barna, PhD
      Department of Genetics
September 26, 2019, 1:30 pm
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman Building


Suchita Rastogi  
 Differential Impacts on Host Transcription by ROP and GRA Effectors from the Intracellular Parasite Toxoplasma gondii

Lab of John Boothroyd, PhD
      Department of Microbiology and Immunology
September 18, 2019, 3 pm
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman Building


Benson George  
 Antibody Approaches to Enable Hematopoietic Stem Cell and Organ Transplant  

Lab of Irving Weissman, MD
      Program in Cancer Biology
September 16, 2019, 3 pm
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman Building 


Thomas Chew  
 Structure and mechanism of the cation-chloride cotransporter NKCC1 

Lab of Liang Feng, PhD
      Program in Biophysics
August 16, 2019, 10 am
LKSC 101/102 


Arek Melkonian  
 The Allostery of Transglutaminase 2 and Its Role in Coeliac Disease 

Lab of Chaitan Khosla, PhD
      Department of Chemical Engineering
August 1, 2019, 2 pm
Allen Building Annex Room 101X
330 Serra Mall


Binbin Chen
Deep learning for predicting antigen presentation  

Labs of  Ash Alizadeh, MD, PhD and Russ Altman, MD, PhD
Department of Genetics
July 24, 2019, 2:30 pm
 LKSC 102


Andrew Beel
Principles of Chromosome Condensation

Lab of Roger Kornberg, PhD
Program in Biophysics
July 23, 2019, 2:00 pm
Alway M-112


Surya Nagaraja
Variant and cell-context specific H3K27M reprogramming results in distinct enhancer architecture and oncogenic states

Lab of Michelle Monje, MD, PhD
Program in Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine
July 22, 2019, 10:00 am
LKSC120


Ericka von Kaeppler

IL-4 to the Rescue: How a Type 2 cytokine protects against post-traumatic osteoarthritis

Lab of Bill Robinson, MD
Program in Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine

June 6, 2019, 3:00 pm
Alway M106


Amira Barkal 

Lab of Irving Weissman, MD
Program in Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine
May 31, 2019


John Pluvinage

Tidying up the aging brain: microglia-directed therapies to restore brain homeostasis

Lab of Tony Wyss-Coray, PhD
Program in Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine

May 24, 2019, 2:00 pm
LKSC 120


Tyler Prestwood

Mela-no-more: Using Myeloid Cells for Melanoma Immunotherapy

Lab of Edgar Engleman, MD
Program in Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine

May 22, 2019, 3:30 pm
Alway M112


Gunsagar Gulati

Cytometric and Genomic Dissection of Stem Cell Hierarchies

Labs of Irving Weissman, MD and Aaron Newman, PhD
Program in Cancer Biology

May 14, 2019, 2:00 pm
Munzer Auditorium


Caitlin Roake

Biogenesis of Telomerase RNA in homeostasis and disease

Lab of Steven Artandi, MD, PhD
Program in Cancer Biology

May 13, 2019


Amin Aalipour

Lab of Sanjiv Gambhir, MD, PhD
Department of Bioengineering
May 13, 2019


Zahra Sayyid
Regeneration and functional recovery of the adult mouse utricle

Lab of Albert Cheung, MD
Program in Neurosciences
March 28, 2019


Shyam Sathyamoorthi
Lab of Richard Zare, PhD
Department of Chemistry
February 9, 2019


Lichy Han
Lab of Russ Altman, MD, PhD
Program in Biomedical Informatics
November 15, 2018