Alan Li earned his B.S. in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and is currently an MD candidate at UCLA, where he received a full merit scholarship. As a translational researcher, Alan works on drug discovery and medical device development in infection immunology under Drs. Nicholas Bernthal, Michael Yeaman, and Kevin Francis. He is passionate about combining his medical and business training to pursue roles in strategy/operations in the life sciences industry following the completion of his medical degree.
Sethiya Khwaish
Khwaish Sethiya is a second-year undergraduate student at UCLA pursuing Molecular, Cell, & Developmental Biology and a Bioinformatics minor. As a Life Sciences Tech Fellow, she works with patents, intellectual property, and project management. She is also a Clinical Research Associate Volunteer at CTSI and a researcher at the Stoyanova Cancer Labs. Professionally, she is interested in pursuing a career in the healthcare industry and bridging business, pharma, and biotech.
Andrew Wang
Allen Takayesu
Allen Takayesu is a PhD candidate working in the Clubb lab within the Biochemistry, Molecular and Structural Biology (BMSB) program at UCLA and is expected to complete his degree in mid 2025. His thesis work focuses on the regulatory machinery within cellulolytic microbes currently under development for the production of biofuels and biomaterials. Prior to UCLA, he also worked on developing novel antimicrobial peptides for use in polymer bioconjugates.
Valentina Alonso
Valentina Alonso is a Ph.D. candidate in the Molecular Biology Institute at UCLA and is conducting research in Dr. Alexander Hoffmann’s laboratory. Her thesis work focuses on understanding the role of NFkB in B cell development and fibroblast cellular senescence. During her time in graduate school, Valentina has gained a broad range of laboratory skills and is now excited to expand her knowledge of technology transfer as a TDG Technology Fellow. After graduating, Valentina hopes to leverage her skills gained in the laboratory along with the TDG fellows program to enter private industry.
Jenna Wahbeh
Ria Sanghera
Rià Sanghera is a third-year Electrical Engineering student at UCLA. Her completed projects in electrical engineering and computer science, include programming a path-following robot, developing a simulated traffic light control system, and coding an efficient file-sending algorithm. Rià also gained experience with data entry and insurance claims processing during her internship with Allied Administrators. She is currently contributing to Swoon Learning by tutoring and documenting novel features of their platform to enhance and scale the service.
Cayden Williamson
Ran Hu
Ran Hu joined TDG as a Technology Fellow in July 2024. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Bioinformatics Interdepartmental Program at UCLA, conducting research in Dr. Jasmine Zhou’s lab. Her research primarily focuses on developing computational methods to analyze cell-free DNA methylation data, aiming to facilitate noninvasive early cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and disease monitoring. As a TDG Fellow, Ran is responsible for creating marketing materials and drafting non-confidential disclosures for UCLA inventions.
Sara Frigui
Sara Frigui was appointed as a Technology Fellow in Life Sciences at TDG in July 2024. She earned her B.S. in Chemistry at Stanford University where she conducted research in the lab of Dr. Rajat Rohatgi. She is currently a UCLA-Caltech MD/PhD student and has completed her pre-clinical medical training. As a Ph.D. candidate, Sara is currently developing methods to rapidly isolate cell populations, focusing on muscle and intestinal stem cells, for in vivo metabolomics analyses under Dr. Heather Christofk.
