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.
Cayden Williamson
Cayden joined TDG in 2023 as a Technology fellow. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Bioengineering at UCLA in Professor Dino DiCarlo’s group. After receiving his B.S. from UC Berkeley, Cayden spent two years at a single-cell sequencing startup before beginning grad school. His current research is focused on creating platforms to accelerate synthetic biology workflows used in biomanufacturing. He expects to graduate in 2024 and make the jump to industry.
Anita Torossian
Anita joined TDG in November 2023 as a Technology Fellow. She is a neuroscience PhD candidate in the Adhikari Lab at UCLA, where she investigates the neural circuits of fear learning and anxiety. Anita received her B.A. in neuroscience and psychology from CUNY Queens College in 2017, and conducted post-baccalaureate research at the NIH on brain metabolism in autism-like disorders. At TDG, Anita will work closely with patent applications and convey the impact of their technologies to facilitate licensing opportunities.
Ramzi Massad
Abril Morales
Abril Morales is a PhD candidate in the Molecular Biology Interdepartmental Program at UCLA and expected to complete her degree in late 2024. Her thesis work in Dr. William Lowry’s lab seeks to understand the stress-induced pathways and metabolomic disturbances of monogenic intellectual disability disorders using stem cell-derived models.
