How do you describe your research to colleagues?
We use Manduca sexta hawkmoth antennae as a chemical sensor on a palm-sized drone platform for odor localization. The antenna produces a compound potential voltage measured from the base to the tip of the antenna in response to odors which we can measure with miniaturized circuitry (an electroantennogram). This electroantennogram is smaller, lighter, and faster responding than any man-made sensors on a similar scale, making them uniquely suitable for sensing odors while on a palm-sized drone. The drone is equipped with optic flow and laser range sensors for autonomous flight and novel fins for passive wind orientation. This makes it possible to execute a bio-inspired search algorithm. We are working to improve this platform for robust outdoor flight and also to be able to detect specific chemicals of interest.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Like a dog’s nose, moths use their antennae to smell odors. When separated from the moth, the antenna still produces small signals in response to the odors they smell for up to a few hours, and longer with some help. We can measure these signals using miniaturized circuitry which we place on a palm-sized drone. This drone is then programmed to autonomously fly towards the odor source using a search algorithm inspired by the way moths track odors like food sources and mates. In the future, this drone plus antenna sensor can be used to seek out a wide variety of sources, such as finding trapped people during search-and-rescue operations, or to locate buried mines. Man-made odor sensors are not small enough or sensitive enough to be able to do these tasks.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Using odor to locate a person, item, or thing is an underutilized task. In life-saving scenarios, such as in search-and-rescue, we use nature in the form of search dogs to locate trapped people via smell because man-made sensors are not portable enough or sensitive enough to be used in this way. By taking advantage of the moth’s incredible antennae, we can make odor localization a more widespread task. In search-and-rescue scenarios, a swarm of these small drones with antennae could locate a trapped person quicker than a dog could traverse the difficult terrain of fallen buildings while keeping the dogs and handlers out of harm’s way. In agriculture, pests and diseases are currently only detected after disease has done visible damage to the crops or the pests have become prevalent enough to be caught in inspected traps; these drones with antennae could provide early detection of these pests and disease via odor. Even in medical settings, the antenna sensing odors on human breath could be a non-invasive alternative to blood draws or nasal swabs for rapid detection of some illnesses.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
I am extremely grateful to the Washington Research Foundation for funding me and my research. Not only is WRF supportive of my research, but they are also supporting my quest to make this technology a reality and to commercialize this research by founding my own company. This fellowship will allow me to do crucial research and make technology developments that will be necessary to continue this path.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
As a WRF postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, I will use eco-physiology and scientific storytelling to understand effects of pollution and ocean warming in Placencia, Belize. My postdoctoral work will be in collaboration with educators and NGOs that are currently advocating for conservation in Belize.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I am a marine biologist and performing artist who uses the combined power of these disciplines to improve our relationship with our blue backyards.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Stakeholder collaborations require time devoted to masterful communication. Therefore, while it is known that ecological dynamics are tied to social dynamics–work to improve the public-to-science connection is only recently emerging the Global South. My proposed work will equally conduct research in an underexplored ecosystem and create a framework to engage communities in my findings.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
While ocean health findings are important for the public to access, more efforts are needed to make scientific information more accessible. The WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship has given me an opportunity to solidify an on-the-ground network in Belize to begin scientific and community work in my next steps alongside the University of Washington and my international partners (Crocodile Research Coalition and the University of Belize).

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I study the developmental pathway of HIV broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) in longitudinal samples of super-infected individuals. Using high throughput sequencing and computational approaches, I reconstruct the lineage of B cells that produce HIV-specific bnAbs, working backward, up to a pre-HIV infection timepoint. This allows me to test the exciting hypothesis that a non-HIV antigen may be required to elicit HIV-bnAbs.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I study rare samples from people who live with HIV and have naturally developed defenses that block many HIV strains. These super defenses are called broadly neutralizing antibodies. My job is to learn from the patients’ samples what is required to induce our immune system to make these super-effective antibodies. With this information, I hope to design a template for a vaccine that can teach our bodies to make HIV broadly neutralizing antibodies from scratch and protect us against HIV diversity.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
I hope to apply the findings of my research to vaccine development and get us a step closer to an effective HIV vaccine.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The support of the WRF allows me to pursue an original research project and take risks. It gives me access to a network of like-minded researchers that share a desire to solve unmet public health challenges and translate their findings into real-world applications. It also provides me with independence at an early stage of my career.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
During my postdoc, I will use a hybrid computational and automated experimental approach to design enzymes. I will focus on the design of enzymes capable of breaking down polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyethylene (PE) plastics to enable the sustainable recycling of these materials. My work will also aim to improve enzyme design methodologies more generally by incorporating machine learning, molecular dynamics, and data-driven approaches enabled by automated and iterative experiments.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I work on designing new enzymes, protein catalysts that build and break down molecules, to enable environmentally benign recycling and breakdown of plastics. To do this, I will use computational techniques to build new enzymes from scratch and use high-throughput experimental methods to manufacture and test the designs in the lab. By performing this process iteratively, I will use the experimental data to improve our design methods and to ultimately make new catalysts capable of breaking down plastics. Through this process, we will also learn how to better design new enzymes with user defined functions.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Plastic waste poses major challenges for human and ecological health. I plan to create enzymes capable of degrading and recycling these materials to alleviate the burdens of plastic waste. More broadly, biomanufacturing with enzymes and engineered biological systems has the potential to shift our economy away from a largely petroleum-based economy to one in which we derive most of the chemicals and materials we need for modern society from biological sources. This shift will be beneficial because it will reduce our impact on our biosphere and shift the world economy to one that is circular and sustainable.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF postdoctoral fellowship enables me to confidently pursue a pivot in my postdoctoral research where I will expand my research skillset by learning computational techniques. Additionally, the three years of funding provided by the fellowship will allow me to take on more ambitious projects. I also anticipate that my interactions with the other fellows and members of the WRF community will have lasting impacts on my career. I am excited to collaborate with the WRF community to amplify my scientific and social impact while learning to become a better scientist and innovator.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
During development, the destiny of cells undergoes dynamic changes influenced by both internal and external factors. Abnormalities in these processes can lead to diseases such as cancer. However, it remains unclear how these happen due to our limited ability to profile molecular events as they unfold in space and time. In this project, I am developing a single-cell “4D” transcriptomics method that provides molecular information with both spatial and temporal resolution. The method decodes the output of molecular recorders that typewrite cellular histories into the genome, thereby recovering multi-modal information about the temporal order of lineage commitment and signaling cascades, tissue architecture, and transcriptome at single-cell resolution. I plan to apply this method to explore tissue-scale mechanisms governing cell fate decisions, utilizing human skin organoids as a model system. Moreover, I aim to leverage the developmental principles to achieve data-driven cell engineering. Overall, this project will uncover spatiotemporal regulation of tissue development and advance tissue engineering techniques for therapeutic applications.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Imagine trying to capture and remember every single moment of a busy city street, which is an incredibly challenging task. Similarly, in tissue development, there are countless cells undergoing dynamic changes, and comprehending all these events is quite difficult. That’s where my research comes in. I aim to develop a new method, like surveillance cameras, to record and store information about crucial events that occur during tissue development. By reviewing this record, we can investigate how tissues form over time and in different locations, uncovering important principles that were previously unexplored due to limitations of traditional methods. Therefore, this study will provide valuable insights into dynamic tissue formation, enhancing our understanding of disease progression and pushing the boundaries of tissue engineering.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
This project aims to introduce a groundbreaking approach that simultaneously profile key principles, including spatial architecture, lineage commitment, signaling transduction, and transcriptome on a genome-wide scale. These molecular characteristics are crucial for the understanding of any multi-cellular context, making this method a versatile tool for advancing our knowledge of disease mechanisms and facilitating the development of effective diagnosis and treatment strategies. Importantly, by utilizing highly adaptable human skin organoids as a model system, this research holds broad potential for studying a wide range of health issues, such as skin regeneration, cancer, psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, and hair loss. As a result, we can uncover critical mechanisms underlying skin diseases and identify novel therapeutic targets. Additionally, the newly identified principles will propel the advancement of organoid techniques for skin regeneration and enable more physiologically relevant drug screening. In summary, the project will make significant contributions to addressing diverse skin problems and advancing the field of tissue engineering, benefiting the general public in multiple ways.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The Washington Research Foundation (WRF) postdoctoral fellowship has had a transformative impact on my research. Thanks to the financial support provided by the fellowship, I have been able to conduct a wide range of experiments, including advanced techniques such as single-cell sequencing. This funding has also given me the flexibility to explore new experiments in the future, pushing the boundaries of my research. Moreover, as someone who completed both my undergraduate and graduate studies in South Korea, I have been eager to establish a new professional network in the United States. The fellowship has been instrumental in facilitating this goal by offering opportunities to attend the annual WRF symposium and other conferences. These experiences have been invaluable in expanding my network, particularly within the scientific community of Washington State. I am sincerely grateful for the invaluable support I receive from the Washington Research Foundation.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I am studying how viruses evolve to escape neutralizing antibodies using a relatively novel approach called deep mutational scanning, which allows us to characterize every single possible mutation in a high throughput manner.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Why do we have to get flu shots every year? Why do we keep getting re-infected with SARS-CoV-2 variants? The main answer is that these viruses evolve so quickly they acquire mutations which no longer allow our antibodies to bind to them. Better understanding of this process, and being able to predict it would have far reaching implications.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
I am studying a virus called Nipah, which is a highly pathogenic virus that regularly spills over from bats into humans in SE Asia. My data should give us a better understanding of the evolutionary capacity of this virus in particular. These data will also help us design better vaccines and monoclonal antibody therapies so that future spillovers will not lead to such devastating fatality rates.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship is such a wonderful honor. I have been struck by the amazing science everyone in this program is doing and the large impact these projects will potentially have on science and society. This funding has also allowed me to focus solely on my project for the next few years, and I am deeply grateful and humbled by this opportunity.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
When addressing plastic waste, we often think of the symbolic PET bottles. However, PET bottles make up only ~12% of the commodity plastic products, while polyolefins are produced as much as 4-5 times of PET bottles (reaching 60% of the plastic market). Typically, most single-use plastics are polyolefins, and these single-use & short-life-span products are the biggest pollution issue. The recycling of polyolefins is quite challenging in many aspects, reflecting the fact that less than 3% of polyolefins are recycled at the current state of the art. For instance, the chemical and biological technologies, which can be more feasibly applied to upcycling PET bottles in advance (e.g., depolymerize wastes to monomers, and then polymerize monomers into new products), are still difficult to handle polyolefin wastes in a similar upcycling route. The chemical recycling of polyolefins mainly focuses on pyrolysis, which holds the promise of eventually valorizing polyolefin wastes into valuable products (e.g., fuels), but the efficiency of this method also depends on energy consumption. Under mild and economic conditions, depolymerization of polyolefins can produce wax-like materials. Waxes are poor in mechanical properties, so is it feasible to regenerate them into new polymeric materials using practical processing methods? Also, how do the miscibility and compatibility of waxes from various plastic products influence the performance of final products (e.g., the tolerance of co-mingles)? And to what extent is depolymerization good in terms of material properties and cost? With these questions, we proposed to conduct a series study on polyolefin waxes, attempting to recycle polyolefin wastes into waxes and then chemically modify them as new feedstock to build polymeric materials (through cross-linking) for open-loop applications that are no longer typical plastics.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Plastic is one of the most symbolic inventions of modern society. We enjoy plastic products because they are versatile and inexpensive for many purposes and applications. Nevertheless, the reality is that every household is pretty much struggling with piles of plastic waste. Each time we go to a grocery store, restaurant, and gift shop, we “purchase” many plastic products, and most of them are packaging materials. Most plastic wastes will end up in landfills or incinerations, and mismanaged plastic wastes are becoming microplastics that pollute everywhere: you can find them in your house’s tap water. In general, the issue of plastic waste is contributing to the global environmental crisis, but we still lack effective strategies and tactics to handle this issue. Hence, as plastic engineers, our task is to develop technologies to combat the massive plastic wastes, facilitating them into a sustainable and manageable cycle. To ensure that we can keep enjoying the convenience with sustainability in mind. In my research, I am thinking about “the other route” that can be more effective than the traditional recycling process of plastic waste. Instead of conventional “plastic-to-plastic” recycling, I look forward to a new insight to “open the loop” of plastic waste.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
There is no doubt that plastic waste is one of the biggest global environmental problems of this century. The public is now even losing confidence in plastic recycling as more ordinary people are concerned whether the plastic waste is completely worthless and considered “trash”. Unlike revealing the environmental impacts, I hope this research will more practically address “how and why we can recycle post-consumer polyolefin wastes via new methods”, with the ultimate goal of reducing plastic products from becoming the wastes that pollute our planet. I believe this ultimate objective is the common desire of all of us.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
I do sincerely appreciate WRF for awarding this fellowship! In my field, the research funding usually comes from national agencies or industries: the previous case sometimes requires preliminary results to support a long-term project, and the latter case is generally short-term and sometimes demands following specific research directions (e.g., corporate interests). WRF’s postdoctoral fellowship does not look like these two; instead, it helps me and other diligent postdoc researchers to independently manage our long-term project that eventually meets public needs. It provides us the freedom and flexibility to bring our research to reality. Personally, since I put the research of plastic recycling as my career objective, this fellowship significantly boost my early career development. Meanwhile, it is also a great platform for me to meet other awesome people in versatile fields.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I study the atmospheric and oceanographic drivers of glacier retreat in the Amundsen Sea Embayment of West Antarctica, which may be in a stage of irreversible retreat. Glaciers in this region are melting via complex ice-ocean-atmosphere processes that are poorly understood and poorly observed, leaving huge uncertainties in projections of ice loss and sea level rise. It is hypothesized that the stage of glacier retreat was initiated in the mid-20th century, prior to the first observations in this region, so I use proxy-data assimilation to reconstruct past atmospheric changes that could have triggered retreat. Complementary to this, I use numerical ocean models to simulate how such historical atmospheric changes could have altered the ocean conditions responsible for ice loss.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I study the drivers of ice loss in the most rapidly melting region of Antarctica. Glaciers in this region are melting via complex wind-ocean processes that are poorly understood, leaving huge uncertainties in projections of ice loss and, ultimately, projections of sea level rise. This is one of the most data-poor regions of the world; as such, I use statistical techniques to extract data from ice cores and other proxy records to understand past climatic changes that may be responsible for ice loss in Antarctica. I also simulate past ocean conditions using complex models to understand the physical mechanisms that bridge the gap between past atmospheric changes and actual ice melting. Together, I hope my research advances our understanding of Antarctic ice loss and can inform projections of future melting.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Sea levels are rising, and a major source of uncertainty in projections of sea level rise is the contribution from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet – which alone can contribute up to ~5 meters of sea level rise. I hope that my research will provide a major advance to understanding of the drivers of glacier retreat in West Antarctica. Given our current understanding, it is extremely difficult to reliably predict how rapidly the ice will melt, so I hope that my research will be able to fill critical knowledge gaps and inform estimates of sea level rise projections, allowing society to better prepare for sea level rise on the appropriate timescales.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
My PhD thesis revealed just how important understanding the oceanographic processes causing melting in Antarctica. A natural next step for my research was to pivot to physical oceanography. The WRF postdoctoral fellowship allowed me to secure funding to work in a top-ranked Oceanography department, maintain collaborations with the top-ranked UW glaciology group, and develop new connections with resources I hadn’t been able to utilize during my PhD (e.g., the WRF-funded eScience Institute).

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Virtually every cellular process relies on the capacity of proteins to change in form and function in response to molecular signals .The ability to toggle between defined conformational states allows proteins to accomplish a huge array of biologically useful tasks, from pumping ions to conditionally inducing transcription. The design of artificial proteins with this sort of precisely defined structural plasticity is a major unsolved challenge in synthetic biology. I aim to address this limitation by exploiting recent machine-learning-based advances in protein structure prediction and design to construct de novo proteins that (1) can shift between defined alternative structural states and (2) can change their function and oligomeric-state in response to signals like light, pH and hormones. My hope is that these allosterically switchable proteins could serve as biosensors, switches as well as protein components in molecular motors.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Proteins are absolutely central to the biology of the cell: they catalyze reactions, help cells sense and respond to their environment, replicate DNA, and mediate many other cellular processes. Part of the reason proteins can carry out these functions is because they can alter their molecular structure, adopting (often quite slightly) different shapes depending on context. Protein engineers have successfully built proteins with diverse shapes and molecular properties. But they are typically designed with a single static structure in mind and are not designed to toggle between specified structural states that could differ in activity. The goal of my postdoctoral work is to build entirely artificial proteins that match or exceed the structural and functional flexibility of natural proteins; i.e., alter their shape and biochemical proteins in response to their environment. Building proteins that dynamically switch in this way, would allow us to more effectively control the activity of synthetic proteins in the cell, with respect to variables like light, pH and hormonal levels, turning them “on” and “off” as needed for various biomedical applications.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
My goal is to produce novel synthetic proteins that can (1) shift between alternative structural states, and (2) change their function and assembly-state in response to signals like hormones, light and pH, with significant application potential in biotechnology. The switchable nanostructures generated in this project could be used to build a new generation of protein-based logic gates or design novel inducible nanomaterials, such as sheets and fibers. Applications to the biomedical field include using these synthetic proteins to drive the association of synthetic cell surface receptors in response to binding to peptide-hormones, with complex-formation triggering a downstream signaling pathway in the cell. Another application is that allosteric proteins that conditionally assemble into rings or cages (or conditionally dissociate from them) could deliver a packaged drug, but only in a specific cellular context. Building conformationally flexible protein binders is also a key stepping stone to even greater design challenges –including the construction of a synthetic protein pumps and molecular walkers that can cycle through defined conformations, turning chemical energy into mechanical work.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
Given that funding opportunities for non-citizen researchers are rather limited in the US and no funding is readily available from my country of national origin, the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship will be quite important to me in independently pursuing my research goals. I anticipate that the WRF fellowship will be an important springboard for my career, helping me build a base of contacts in the biomedical field, as well as making me competitive for job opportunities down the line in both academia and industry. It is also an amazing opportunity for me to meet other scientists in the Washington area, opening the doors to fruitful collaborations and an exchange of ideas.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I work in upconversion, which is a photophysical process that generates higher energy photons from lower energy photons. I study triplet-triplet annihilation upconversion, which involves a triplet energy transfer between a photosensitizer molecule and an emitter molecule. My system is unique because it can efficiently generate triplets on the photosensitizer without the use of a heavy atom.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
My research aims to make solar panels more efficient by capturing light that is transmitted through the panel and converting it into light that the panel can use to generate power. This means you get more power from the panel from the same amount of incident light!

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
I hope to make solar panels more efficient and leverage that efficiency increase to accelerate the clean energy transition.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF postdoc fellowship gives me the freedom to be able to develop my technology and make it relevant for commercial solar applications. I don’t need to worry about funding myself, so I can focus on the science!

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I deploy a combination of field and lab-based techniques to address questions about species co-existence, by examining the processes that drive biodiversity patterns across multiple spatial scales – from small, site level dynamics to large, biogeographical scales, including examining mainland versus island communities.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I seek to understand how so many species coexist in biodiversity rich areas like the tropics. For example, what group of bat species occur together and how do those coexistence relationships arise? My research also includes monitoring at risk species and documenting how human activities drive biodiversity loss, informing my conservation work.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
My work benefits the public by investigating and simultaneously responding to anthropologic impacts at local and large spatial scales that together address planetary scale crises. For example, my bat research discovered an Endangered bat species that was feared to be extinct in 2016, threatened by cave disturbance (microscale) and wildfires (landscape scale). Since that discovery, my field research demonstrated the need to raise local capacity and capability to fight the major threats. My work addresses the three biggest challenges of our time, by managing wildfires to protect forest and biodiversity, mitigate climate change, while reducing zoonotic disease risks for local communities.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship offered the opportunity to launch my lifelong dream of working on islands in addition to facilitating local community engagement. The fellowship empowered me to expand my bat research and conservation to the Gulf of Guinea Islands, a truly unique opportunity to combine my scholarly community engagement with my academic interests.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
The role of gut microbes in autoimmune diseases (ADs) is rapidly evolving with lot of new findings over the last few years. These studies suggest that disturbances in the composition of the gut microbiota are strongly associated with autoimmune disorders. My goal is to investigate how immunity to gut microbiota antigens is altered in the patients with ADs and seek to identify whether microbiota-reactive antibodies may also cross-react with human proteins using high throughput technologies. I hope we will be able to identify specific microbial proteins aberrantly targeted in autoimmune disorders but not in healthy subjects and be the basis for future specificity testing in independent cohorts.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
The gastrointestinal tract harbors the largest and most diverse microbial community in the human body. The balance between microbiota and immune system is important to maintain the homeostasis. There are multiple lines of evidence that link insufficient exposure to microbial agents in early life to an increased risk of autoimmune disorders such as T1D and rheumatoid arthritis. Our goal is to identify gut microbiota-specific antigens that are targeted by immune system in the patients with autoimmune disorders.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
The identification of disease-relevant microbial antigens has been challenging in any autoimmune disease, but our current discovery-based methods offer innovative approaches to this problem. This proposal utilizes new tools and approaches to investigate a key question, how do commensal-reactive immune responses contribute to extra-intestinal autoimmune diseases. Mining the gut microbiome to identify immunogenic microbial proteins or peptides capable of inducing a systemic antibody response in the host may identify novel biomarker candidates for AD diagnostics. We will develop new methods and technologies based on T1D and RA, which will form the basis of future studies for other autoimmune disorders.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
WRF is an exciting opportunity that will allow me to pursue an independent career at an early stage. Being an international post-doctoral fellow, early-career independent funding opportunities are restrictive. However, the progressive nature of the WRF fellowship allowed me to establish my own independent funding, while also allowing for more grant money to be spent on research projects. I can attend WRF lectures and events, discuss my ideas with the researchers in my field and with the wider scientific community. These prospects will expand my scientific horizon and open doors for collaborations that could have a beneficial impact on my career.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
My research is focused on grid-scale energy storage technologies. Specifically, I am studying redox chemistries for hybrid flow battery applications. While flow batteries have been envisioned for grid-scale energy storage, their deployment has mostly been hampered by high cost, low energy density, and expensive, non-abundant materials. I am employing synthesis, spectroscopy, and electrochemistry to study ways of increasing the energy density of flow batteries with abundant, inexpensive materials and redox-active solids.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I am studying a class of flow batteries that store energy in electrolyte tanks, which are separate from the power generation components. This separation of power and energy makes this technology safer and cheaper to scale up than traditional sealed batteries. In principle, these energy storage tanks can be large enough to power large portions of the grid. Traditional flow batteries, however, are expensive and they use corrosive, non-abundant materials. To address this problem, I am working to develop new electrolyte systems with high energy densities from abundant materials. If successful, this research will pave the way for efficient, inexpensive energy storage at grid scale.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
A clean energy grid that relies on renewable energy sources is critical if we want to combat climate change and decrease pollution. While solar and wind power are great sustainable energy sources, they are intermittent. When the sun goes down and wind stops blowing, we still rely mostly on fossil fuels for power. Therefore, reliable energy storage solutions need to supplement renewables for a clean energy grid to work. Energy storage is just one piece of the puzzle, but the big-picture goal of my research is that it will lead to the development of economical, grid-scale energy storage technologies that can interface with a clean energy grid. This way, we can build energy storage containers that can power several homes or larger portions of the grid with clean energy on-demand.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF fellowship is allowing me to pursue an exciting research project that was not previously funded or explored in my group. As a postdoc, I am also interested in learning how a research project goes from fundamental science to a company. This fellowship will provide unique opportunities to learn about the engineering, policy, and business aspects of that process.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Ice formation in fluids plays a critical role in cryopreservation, atmospheric sciences, and aerospace materials. However, a poor understanding of ice nucleation and transformation in fluids, especially in the early stage, impedes the development of new ice-inhibiting methods. Existing ice formation models are limited to the classical nucleation theory, which assumes that ice crystals nucleate and grow through monomer attachment of water molecules. Despite the discoveries in multiple materials systems, non-classical pathways have not been invoked in most ice research models; this is mainly due to a lack of tools to monitor nanoscale ice formation and transformation in real space. I will develop new methods and instruments that enable low-temperature (scanning) transmission electron microscopy and use them to (1) map the surface and interface structure of ice and ice-colloid boundaries at atomic resolution and (2) observe nanoscale ice nucleation, growth, and transformation in colloidal fluids, including bio-liquids and aerosol analogs. This work will provide new capabilities for studying nano- and atomic-scale low-temperature phenomena, provide new insights on ice formation dynamics, and may eventually lead to novel ice inhibition protocols/agents and atmospheric models.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Have you imagined how ice crystals form at the beginning? Ice is constructed by water molecules in a periodic way, but an ice crystal is rarely perfect. Their surfaces, interfaces between grains, and interfaces with minerals or other materials play a huge role in defining their formation and growth behavior. My research aims to resolve these structures and observe the initial formation of ice crystals when they are only a few to tens of nanometers in size. These studies may provide critical insights into ice formation pathways in bio-liquids and the atmosphere and eventually enable new ice-promoting or anti-icing technologies.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
I hope the low-temperature in-situ microscopy techniques we develop will benefit the study of materials at sub-zero temperatures with high stability, correlated electron/confocal microscopy studies of cells, and in situ monitoring of chemical reactions that occur at low temperatures. The scientific discoveries regarding ice formation pathways and the role of new anti-icing agents will enable the engineering and discovery of novel cryopreservation agents and food processing protocols. These potential outcomes may improve the quality of bioproducts from therapeutics to everyday frozen foods. New insights in the ice formation kinetics in aerosols could benefit atmospheric modeling both for research and public forecasting in the long run.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship provides a unique opportunity for me to explore a new technical field that has been largely unexplored. Under the support of the Fellowship, I have the resources to develop the new instrumentation and techniques required to investigate the sciences of nanoscale ice. With this Fellowship, I also challenge myself with resource/team management, multi-disciplinary collaboration, and translation of sciences to practical applications; all will be precious for my independent career.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I design and use tools that combine imaging and deep-learning based computer vision techniques to study animals in their natural physical and social environments. Primarily, I use drone mounted or fixed cameras to record raw footage of animals or landscapes of interest. Then, I use software to detect and track all present individuals in the footage and combine this with information about the camera’s geometry to precisely translate these tracks from the coordinates of the video frame to the real world in which behavior occurs. This work spans from ungulates in Kenya, to fruit bats Zambia, to pacific salmon in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.

Particularly in the case of salmon, the combination of drones and software allows us to begin to explore automating tasks like seasonal redd or salmon counts which are vital for effective and sustainable management. At the same time, we can also explore important ecological interactions such as the details of grizzly bear/salmon hunts and the effects of sociality on sockeye salmon migration.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I design and use tools that let us extract data from images of animals in their natural habitats. These tools let us monitor the health of animal populations as well as understand how they make decisions about what to do and where to go based on the individuals around them and the environment they find themselves in. Currently I am focused on doing this work in the context of pacific salmon and particularly in terms of salmon reproduction. Where do they choose to build nests? How many are they? How do they find the best locations and arrive safely? What does this tell us about salmon in particular but also what does this tell us about how any individual can effectively make decisions in complex and constantly changing environments?

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
This work opens the door to multiple public benefits. The most immediate comes from the possibility of creating more efficient tools for monitoring and understanding salmon populations in streams across their range. Quantifying the number of returning fish is often a key metric for evaluating the number of fish that can be harvested in healthy populations and for monitoring recovery (or not) in endangered populations. There are a range of tools used for this already but many of these rely on humans, in helicopters, on counting towers, or by the side of the stream, visually counting fish or their nests (redds). Drones and software can provide a way to scale up this monitoring effort beyond the areas and times that managers can currently deploy humans creating richer and more precise datasets. These tools can also simultaneously let us ask important questions about the wider ecology of both salmon and the wider natural world.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship has been instrumental in allowing me to continue this work. Their willingness to fund longer term, three year projects has let me be ambitious both in terms of the designing of these tools and in terms of building relationships with the large range of stakeholders that are involved in the study and management of pacific salmon. The Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellows are an enthusiastic group of researchers and I am happy to get to spend time with them.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Surface modification is commonly used to bestow biological functionality to various solid surfaces in order to expand their utility. Currently, a wide variety of chemical methods have been employed to confer such properties for various applications. These include covalent and non-covalent immobilization strategies in order to anchor biomolecules onto inorganic materials. Though widely used, covalent bonding methods have several major disadvantages: substrate specific chemistries limit the types of materials that can be functionalized, random orientation of the immobilized biomolecule diminish surface reactivity, and the use of harsh processing chemicals destroy or render useless the biomolecule to be immobilized. Likewise, current non-covalent bonding methods are limited in their material selectivity and molecular recognition capabilities. Given the limitations associated with using chemical linkages and chemisorption- or physisorption-based methods, an alternate approach based on solid-binding peptides is used for surface functionalization. This versatile and modular approach will be used to imbue sensor surfaces with functional characteristics for creating biosensor devices that can detect cancer, COVID-19, and other diseases and ailments.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
My research exists at the intersection of materials science and biology, with relevance to nanotechnology applications. Specifically, my research is on functionalizing the interface between solid materials and biological molecules in order to enable biosensor and bioelectronic technologies. Short segments of proteins, called peptides, are useful in this application since they allow specific recognition of a variety of materials based on their unique amino acid sequence. In addition, since peptides are of biological origin, they are also amenable for use with biomolecules and biomarkers. My goal is to take these solid-binding peptides and place them on sensing materials in order to create novel biosensors that can detect disease signatures from various biological fluids like blood or saliva.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
The main societal benefit of this research is the potential for creating diagnostics towards health monitoring and disease detection. This could reduce the financial burden of patients by allowing for another avenue of preventative medicine that diagnoses and treats disease prior to costly corrective measures that come with later diagnosis. The scientific impact includes widening the path for peptide- enabled surface functionalization of low-dimensional materials such as graphene and carbon nanotubes. These peptide-based approaches are largely underexplored and thus provide ample opportunities for novel scientific discovery.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The Fellowship has given me the freedom to pursue my intellectual curiosities beyond the scope of pre-existing funded research. Having this intellectual freedom allows me to ask bold research questions and explore wild scientific paths.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Cells in many organisms, including humans, store excess energy in small, oily packets called lipid droplets, which the cells engulf to retrieve energy during periods of stress. Our Best understanding of this mechanism comes from the study of yeast. These, reveal that a phase transition, occurring in a membrane of an organelle called the vacuole, is a crucial step in this process. During the transition, the lipids in the membrane phase separate into large distinct domains. The domains can appear as cupped dimples on a golf ball, or have a more sharp, crenelated shape. However, it is not understood how such shapes arise, how they evolve over time, or how they affect binding between vacuoles and droplets. My research studies this astonishing shape-transition in vivo – by investigating living yeast, in vitro – by fabricating synthetic membranes, and by formulating a theoretical model that captures this striking behavior.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
How do natural systems shape themselves? The answer, surprisingly, is quite intricate. While humans have mastered many fabrication techniques that involve adding and removing material externally, natural systems utilize inner stresses to do that intrinsically. Examples rise from local contractions in a beating heart to the dehydration-induced shrinkage inducing the opening of a pinecone. Both our understanding of such concepts and our ability to mimic them in synthetic systems are still lacking. After working on “inanimate materials”, using geometrical tools to study their properties, and inventing novel fabrication techniques, my focus shifted to living biological systems. In this context, I study the shape evolution of fatty membranes. Many of such membranes reside in living cells, and their evolving shape is important to biological function. Currently, I am interested in a specific organelle, called the vacuole, whose shape conformation is theorized to be essential to metabolism in cells.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
My work focuses mostly on basic science, and as such aims to broaden our understanding of nature. In this context, my research aims to understand mechanisms that drive processes crucial to biological function. Furthermore, I hope my research will motivate others to focus on “active solids”, leading to similar significant progress endowed by their fluid counterparts. Finally, I hope that the interdisciplinary nature of my research along with my personal interests, which stirred my research towards “real-life applications”, will keep doing so in the future.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship has enabled me to pursue an ambitious project which requires me to master new experimental techniques and includes several successive steps, each crucial to fulfilling my research goals. Additionally, by having my own funding I can more easily collaborate with other researchers, promoting additional scientific directions I am interested in. I am grateful for the opportunity to interact and to present my research to the wide scientific network of the WRF and to the other WRF fellows.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
My research involves bringing advances in technology to the perioperative space for improving patient care and safety. For this project, smart eyewear and computer vision techniques will be leveraged to develop tools specific to identification of syringes and drug delivery events. I collect video footage from the care of patients in the operating room, as well as simulated medical errors. These data are carefully annotated to develop machine learning tools for differentiating between types of medications through optical character recognition as well as to define potentially hazardous events. This research also focuses on calculating the syringe volume before and after drug injection using image segmentation techniques, as well as improving algorithm performance in low light environments (such as laparoscopic surgery) through image post processing. To accomplish the goals of this project we will need to develop techniques for improving computer vision tools for detecting small objects from large, high-resolution images and leverage information across a series of frames in the time domain to characterize an action. Ultimately these advances can be applied to a broad range or problems both inside and outside of the medical sphere.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I am working on building a computerized patient advocate, a second set of eyes that can check the work of a healthcare provider while a patient is asleep in the operating room. This will be an automated system that takes in video data (through smart eyewear or other cameras) and identifies syringes that are selected by a medical provider prior to injection into a patient. It will use computer vision algorithms to ‘read’ the contents of the syringe from the label and relay that information to the provider through auditory or visual feedback, confirming that the provider has selected the correct drug. This advocate will also determine the volume of medication given to a patient and record it in the electronic medical record. Currently, drug doses are recorded manually by the healthcare provider, eliminating this task will decrease electronic distractions, allowing physicians to focus more directly of the care and safety of the patient.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
I hope that we will be able to provide safer patient care as a part of my work. Identifying medications before and during injection into a patient can allow for opportunities to intervene and avoid harm. For example, a warning if a patient is allergic the drug in a syringe when it is picked up by a provider (rather than after the drug has been given) or if a medication dose becomes larger than typically recommended for a pediatric patient, the provider might stop giving the dose to make sure it is correct. In addition, improved accuracy of the medical record would potentially allow for individualized machine learning for optimizing drug doses in the operating room. More broadly, these first steps toward incorporating computer vision techniques into patient care could spur many future advances in healthcare.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
I am so excited to be a part of the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship program and look forward to meeting the other fellows and mentors that have a wide range of experience in academics, industry and medicine. I have so much to learn from them. This funding is essential at a time when hospital systems are under extreme financial stress due to the pandemic so I will have a better opportunity to pursue my research goals and next steps in my career as an academic anesthesiologist-engineer.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
A lot of our analysis methods within the genome sciences are largely sequence based where we study the composition of RNA and DNA isolated from cells and tissue. There’s a newer class of methods that allow us to study RNA and DNA directly in situ—that is, within cells and tissue itself, without having to isolate RNA and DNA molecules for analysis. These methods are broadly referred to as “spatial -omics”, and rely on advanced microscopy to visualize RNA and DNA in a sequence-specific manner. While this new class of methods are unlocking incredible insights into biology, it is largely two-dimensional, being applied to sheets of cells or very thin tissue slices. My work aims to combine the latest advances in light sheet microscopy with RNA/DNA visualization to make spatial -omics more scalable so that larger volumes of tissue can be assayed at once in three dimensions.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
My goal is to create a method that makes 3D portraits of samples by “painting” their RNA molecules.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
I hope that my work can push forward 3D pathology efforts. When patient biopsies are acquired, only a small portion of it is tested to look for pathological features (like cancerous cells). It’s possible that these important features are missed simply because the few thin sections acquired do not include them, and/or because the pathologist can’t appreciate the biopsy’s features in three dimensions. Combining 3D visualization with the ability to detect specific RNAs means that we can target a wider range of disease biomarkers without relying on antibodies, all the while preserving native tissue structures. My hope is that patient outcomes will be improved by this kind of 3D pathology approach. While I imagine this as a future extension of my work, for now, I’m working in a developmental biology context using mouse embryos (which are much easier and consistent to get over patient samples).

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
My proposed work is generally perceived as risky because it’s resource-intensive and requires many diverse skill sets (ranging from mouse husbandry to cluster computing!). As a result, my science is harder to fund. I’m really grateful that the Washington Research Foundation is supporting my work. Not only do I have increased access to resources to help achieve my goals, I also have access to a wider collaborative research community and network right here in the PNW.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I am a wildlife ecologist who integrates fundamental ecological knowledge, statistical modelling, and emerging technologies to understand how changing environments shape animal behaviour and population persistence. My studies span scales and disciplines, but in particular, they focus on using bespoke animal-worn sensors to understand how climate change alters the behaviours of predators and the consequences of these shifts for wildlife and people. By providing insight into how and why species are affected by climate change, I aim to help improve the futureproofing of conservation initiatives by informing on potential future conflicts and the difficulties predators face in adapting to their new environments.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I help create animal-worn sensors that allow us to track where animals are moving in their environments, and I use these sensors to understand how environmental change is impacting wildlife. By combining the GPS data from sensors that animals wear with data from satellite imagery and climate measurements, I ask questions ranging from ‘how and why do large predators change their behaviours in response to temperatures’ to ‘will rising temperatures increase conflict between carnivores and people.’ By providing insight into how and why species are affected by climate change, I aim to help improve the futureproofing of conservation initiatives by informing on potential future conflicts and the difficulties predators face in adapting to their new environments.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
The success of species conservation for future generations depends on our understanding of how they are affected by current environmental changes. Understanding how climate impacts wildlife is critical for guiding conservation efforts across spatial scales because it allows us to understand, anticipate, and adapt our decisions to consider changing environments. This information can be important for setting broader policy targets since understanding ecological processes within systems (and how they might change with climate) can help guide policies that protect the ecosystem services we rely upon. For example, it can help us determine the habitats most important for species’ survival and inform the design of wildlife-protected areas that continue to be effective as conditions change. My work can also help understand where and why environmental change may alter or amplify conflict between people and wildlife. In doing so, my work can help inform the development of effective conservation solutions that target the underlying causes of conflict and that benefit both people and wildlife.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
My most impactful research comes when I have the intellectual and financial freedom to adapt research agendas to an evolving understanding of problems and when co-developing solutions with stakeholders. The level of intellectual and financial freedom provided by the Washington Research Foundation postdoctoral fellowship is rare and provides the ideal conditions for me to do my most impactful and best work. The fellowship has provided me with the freedom needed to pursue ambitious ideas that would not otherwise be possible. Further, the WRF research community has provided an inspiring interdisciplinary environment that allows me to develop my research in a way that maximises its societal impact.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Histone proteins package DNA in eukaryotic cells and regulate a vast array of essential biological processes. This essentiality has typically led to the constrained evolution of histone proteins. Yet, more recent work including my own suggests that some histones can show dramatic variability in sequence or new histone proteins can evolve in specific eukaryotic lineages. This defies what is characteristically expected of histones and suggests that innovation in histone proteins could lead to biologically novel functions. My work focuses on identifying such evolutionary novelties and studying the consequences of these new or varied histones using multiple model organisms.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Every cell in an organism (like the human body) contains the same DNA which is extremely long and needs to be packaged to fit within our tiny cells using proteins called histones. Despite having the same DNA, different cells in the body behave and function differently. Histones not only help package DNA but also facilitate which pieces of DNA are used in a cell so that cells can still develop differently to perform different functions. I study how these histone proteins have evolved across organisms from the single-celled budding yeast to complex multi-cellular organisms like humans and how these evolutionary changes can contribute to unique functions in these organisms.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
My work aims to understand the very basics of how cells in an organism function. Specifically, my work will highlight how changes in histone repertoires can alter biological functions across organisms. I have already discovered new histones in humans that were previously unknown highlighting how evolution is an excellent tool to find new histones and study their functions. Furthermore, histone proteins are altered in many diseases including cancers and my work could ultimately reveal how changes that accumulate during disease could alter their function.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship has been instrumental for me to ask ambitious scientific questions. My postdoctoral work requires me to learn and implement techniques in multiple model organisms which will give us a wholesome picture of histone innovations. The WRF fellowship is also unique since it supports scientists across varied STEM fields. This gives me the rare the opportunity to interact with diverse scientists, to get feedback from scientists with varied expertise and to establish future collaborations.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
STEM fields are not equitable, inclusive, or diverse, and are perceived to be highly competitive. Could in-class competition have disproportionate detrimental impacts on students from minoritized groups in STEM? I will investigate how students’ perception of class competition impacts students’ feelings of belonging and course performance. Additionally, I will explore the impact of the instructor vulnerability-authority tradeoff on students’ perception of in-class competition, and develop tools to measure the impact of instructor behaviors on student belongingness and equity in academic outcomes.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
My research is focused on developing tools for instructors to measure inequities in their classrooms and implement teaching methods that could promote equitable outcomes in student performance and belonging in STEM.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
My research focuses on developing STEM inclusive education tools, all of which will aid instructors in identifying, assessing, and measuring the impact of their interventions in classroom environments. All the products I develop through my postdoctoral work, will be intended for STEM educators at colleges and universities, thereby amplifying the scale of impact in the field of science education.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
While BER is a rapidly growing field of study, there are fewer postdoctoral fellowship opportunities supporting scientists transitioning from life sciences research to biology education research (BER). Receiving the WRF Postdoctoral fellowship has enabled my transition from life science research to BER. I am grateful for WRF’s support, since it has given me a platform to work towards my eventual goal of becoming an effective biology educator and pursuing my BER research vision.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
In my research, I have tried to marry my academic interests with the practical needs of the conservation sector. On the academic side, I am interested in what happens when populations decline rapidly and what that means for genetic diversity and whether (and under what circumstances) this causes mutational load that affects individual fitness. Further, I am interested in how best to recover that diversity. How do we best apply our resources when it comes to genetic diversity given the options we have (e.g. translocations, captive breeding, etc.)? On the flip side of this, is providing a practical avenue to conservationists to use genetic tools for individual or species ID and to monitor the populations they study. Normally it takes a few years for an academic to do a genomic study of a population, but managers need answers rapidly (which animal was involved in a human wildlife conflict event? where did this trafficked individual come from?) to make decisions. Creating multiplex PCR panels from well-managed reference databases for species of conservation concern is a great addition to current conservation tools.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
The best way to think about my research is similar to services like 23andme and Ancestry, but for wildlife. We want to create useful tools using genetics to monitor populations, but also give us a better understanding of their overall health and diversity. Most importantly, we want to do this in a way that is accessible to wildlife managers. This will ensure that they are empowered to make rapid decisions about endangered species listings, translocations etc. In addition, these kinds of genetic tools can help us identify products in the illegal wildlife trade or in human-wildlife conflict events. These tools also minimize the interaction we need to have with wildlife to monitor them. If we can extract DNA from hair or feces, then we don’t have to bother the animal to learn about how they fit into the population and what their status is.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Generally, I hope that we can provide a roadmap to create portable tools for wildlife conservation. We already have a great collaboration started for piloting this work in brown bears with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and they are very serious about monitoring bear populations from year to year in the lower 48. Other species we are working on, like the wolverine and the puma, are more cryptic and rare, and we know a lot less about where these populations might be in the Pacific Northwest. So, just having that information will help us to make policy recommendations.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
I think what is great about the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship is that it gives you a lot of flexibility to pursue your research and also connects you to a range of individuals that have experience across different sectors (like academia, industry, non-profit etc.). This is, I think, the ideal scenario for your postdoc– having that room to explore and exposure/access to all of your options.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
My research focuses on camas (Camassia spp.), an edible bulb common throughout the Northwest. My doctoral thesis identified that this plant was managed or stewarded by Native peoples over the past 4,000 years through distinct selective harvesting practices; but that despite significant human input to the lifecycles of these plants, we have no phenotypic evidence that camas was domesticated. My postdoctoral research program seeks to expand these findings. Specifically, my collaborators and I are working on understanding three things about Northwest peoples diets in the past: what were people eating in conjunction with camas, further expanding on how they were manipulating, managing, or stewarding past camas communities and ecosystems, and how past climate changed affected those management practices. For the fellowship I will model how paleoclimatic trends may have expanded or contracted past camas niches, which can then be compared with archaeological data on camas management. Our ultimate goal is to collaborate with tribal nations and state and federal agencies to create informed management plans for camas that account for millennia of human input as well as future global warming and aridification. We further envision extrapolating these workflows to other cultural keystone plant foods in the future.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
In archaeology, we try to give voice to past people through limited evidence. It was not until working on my masters, however, that I realized archaeology could do more than just tell stories of the past; indeed, we can use archaeological evidence to support and expand livelihoods, quality of life, and even influence policy decisions for contemporary descendent communities. My research looks at the plant foods of past Northwest peoples. Specifically, we are working on elucidating the ways people managed or otherwise cared for, prepared, and consumed plant foods over the last 8,000 years. My colleagues and I have plans to use this information to establish and expand native plant food habitats for contemporary harvests and increase access for Northwest Native communities. This work is important as many Native American and First Nation communities are interested in returning to their traditional diets to support overall community health and rekindle connections to their cultural heritage.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
For many Native people within Washington State and throughout North America, traditional foodways have long been disrupted and replaced by modern food systems, which displace and separate consumers from their food sources. The loss of those food sources and associated land tenure systems have had harmful effects on their food security and overall health. In response, many tribal communities are now seeking food sovereignty as a means of restoring control over food choices and community health. My collaborators and I plan on implementing the results of our work at restoration sites throughout the region as a means of expanding native plant food niches. By providing access and additional insights into traditional foods and food preparation, we hope to have a positive impact on the overall health and wellbeing of many tribal communities throughout the Northwest.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
When working with descendent and Indigenous communities, it is vitally important to work with people and to invest time in establishing and maintaining relationships. This fellowship grants the time and resources to fully commit to this food sovereignty project. Academia has a long history of taking from Native communities rather than giving back, and I am fully committed to breaking that tradition and conducting research to support the people who have lived in this region since time immemorial. I am also excited about the potential of meeting and networking with other WRF associated scientists; as a lifelong learner, I’m looking forward to expanding my own horizons through the work of others.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are essential for maintaining homeostasis in the immune system. Mice and humans that lack Tregs due to mutations in the gene encoding Foxp3, the master transcription factor of the Treg lineage, develop systemic and fatal autoimmunity. In addition to the expression of Foxp3, Tregs express high levels of the interleukin-2 (IL-2) receptor α-chain and are dependent on IL-2. The advancement of adoptive Treg cellular therapies or biologicals that boost Tregs is of significant interest for autoimmunity, transplantation, and allergy. Our group developed an IL-2 mutein that specifically expands Tregs leading to protection in a mouse model of Type 1 Diabetes. My postdoc work focuses on investigating the role of T cell receptor (TCR) self-reactivity in influencing the Treg response to IL-2 mutein and how peripheral Treg induction affects the activation of antigen-presenting cells and effector T cells. To address these questions, I am utilizing markers that correlate with TCR signal strength, high-dimensional flow cytometry to characterize induced Tregs, in addition to sequencing-based approaches to profile other immune populations after IL-2 mutein treatment.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Autoimmunity is often the result of the abnormal activation of a type of immune cell called T cells. This is due to a break in immune tolerance, which is the ability of the immune system to distinguish between normal proteins expressed in healthy tissues (self) and foreign proteins such as those derived from pathogens (non-self). Currently, most treatments for autoimmunity result in broad immunosuppression and do not address the underlying causes of disease. My research interests lie in investigating how immune tolerance is established, why it fails, and in developing therapies to promote tolerance.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Autoimmune disorders are thought to affect as many as 50 million people in the United States and their incidence is steadily increasing. While our understanding of the mechanisms driving autoimmune responses has substantially increased in the last few decades better treatments are needed. Strategies that aim to restore the Treg to effector T cell balance hold great promise in this regard. The proposed studies with IL-2 mutein will advance our understanding of how this therapy works and address fundamental questions in Treg biology.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The fellowship from WRF has provided me with the freedom to pursue my own research interests and ideas, which I think is the foundation for a successful postdoctoral training experience. I believe that the opportunities provided by WRF will allow me to build long-lasting relationships and collaborations with colleagues.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
My postdoctoral research seeks to understand tripartite interactions between bacteria, fungi, and plants; and how these naturally occurring interactions can be harnessed for sustainable agricultural practices. Plants evolved on land with the help of fungal partners, and over 85% of plants worldwide form mutualistic relationships with fungi. Bacteria also interact with plants, live freely in the soil, and live on and within fungal spores and hyphae. My postdoctoral research will utilize field studies, molecular techniques, chemical analysis, microscopy, bioreactor systems, and greenhouse experiments to: 1) better understand the extent of plant-fungal-bacterial interactions in natural environments; 2) find compatible fungi and bacteria that have potential to increase plant nitrogen uptake and overall plant health; and 3) test if a mix of these organisms can be used as biofertilizer to reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers in agricultural cropping systems.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Fungi and bacteria are everywhere! Sometimes they get a bad reputation for causing health issues and hurting ecosystems, but so many of them are beneficial. In fact, the world we see today would likely not be here if it wasn’t for these tiny organisms. My research focuses on how these organisms interact with plants, and how those interactions can be used to benefit us and our surrounding environment. The reality is that greenhouse gases are increasing, and a very potent one is nitrous oxide. A huge source of nitrous oxide is from synthetic nitrogen fertilizer added to cropping systems. This also pollutes our water systems and disrupts the natural fungal and bacterial processes in the soil. Certain bacteria can naturally fix nitrogen from the atmosphere, and a diversity of fungi can provide nutrients to plants. My research aims to better understand these interactions and further harness these organisms to act as a natural fertilizer that will make the plants happy and healthy while decreasing the need for synthetic fertilizers.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
I hope to create a novel biotechnology that won’t only benefit plant growth while decreasing the use of harmful fertilizers, but also contribute to the perspective that the organisms that have helped sustain plants for millions of years can still be used today. Utilizing microorganisms to increase plant growth and benefit plant health is nothing new, but often times it is either bacteria or fungi. My research aims to combine their benefits and create a product that can be applied to certain cropping systems, decreasing the need for fertilizers that are destroying our environments and atmosphere. People depend on crops, but they also need a planet to thrive on. My research aims to find a solution that addresses both issues because we cannot only focus on one at the expense of the other.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship has provided the opportunity to pursue my scientific ideas, while allowing me the freedom to collaborate with scientists, students, and the surrounding communities. During this fellowship, I will learn new approaches, improve my current skillset, and form relationships that will benefit me well into my future as an independent scientist. Additionally, I will be conducting this research in the place I call home. I am very family oriented, and I am so honored to work with an organization that supports that.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Epitopes on several viruses have been identified as key targets for viral neutralization, often with broad neutralizing activity across strains and serotypes. However, the endogenous B cell response rarely results in broadly neutralizing antibody (bNAb) production. While bNAb infusion is currently being tested in the clinic, the half-life of these antibodies is such that reinfusion is required to maintain protection. Consequently, the Taylor laboratory has developed a B cell engineering technology, which involves taking B cells and using CRISPR/Cas9 to introduce a double stranded break in the antibody heavy chain gene. A protective antibody construct consisting of DNA encoding a pathogen-specific antibody, is then inserted at the cut site, resulting in engineered B cells that act as a rapid, long-term source of antiviral antibodies. My goal is to expand the therapeutic range of engineered B cells. I am doing this in two ways. The first is by engineering B cells to express multiple protective antibodies against several different viruses instead of just one. The second is by engineering B cells to express both a virus-specific antibody and another, non-antibody, therapeutic protein.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
B cells are one of the cell subsets that make up your immune system. B cells produce proteins called antibodies, some of which bind to specific viruses and prevent them from infecting your cells. My research focuses on engineering B cells to produce antibodies that are protective against viruses for which no effective vaccines currently exist. I am also engineering B cells to produce additional, non-antibody, proteins as a potential therapy for patients with protein deficiencies.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the significant and far-ranging impacts viruses can have on infected individuals, their families, and society at large. My work will advance the field of B cell engineering and potentially provide another mechanism by which we can protect people, particularly the elderly and immunocompromised, from severe viral infections. My long-term goal is for my research to become the basis of a B cell therapy that is translated into the clinic.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
My Washington Research Foundation (WRF) Postdoctoral Fellowship has given me the resources to pursue research that is both impactful and ambitious. As a result of being a WRF fellow, I am developing my mentoring, management, and collaboration skills as I work with colleagues to advance my research projects. Additionally, the WRF has expanded my career development opportunities by organizing various events and providing funding to attend conferences. Overall, my WRF fellowship is an invaluable part of my postdoctoral research. I believe the experiences I gain as a WRF fellow will be an asset in future stages of my career.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Emergent complexity in the dynamics of driven systems enables incredible functions in living organisms, including memory, computational processing, and adaptive evolution. Can we design and control dynamical complexity to self-assemble computing technologies from the bottom up that outperform traditional, top-down designs? Through data-driven discovery of parsimonious dimension-reduced models, I aim to design machine-learning-inspired reservoir computing technologies in systems of active matter. Realization of physical reservoir computers will represent a paradigm shift in computational technology that has the potential to rapidly compete and potentially outperform traditional digital electronics.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
The whole is often greater than the sum of its parts. While engineers traditionally piece together basic parts (like pendula and gears) to design a system (like a clock) from a blueprint, simple components can also interact to produce surprising collective behavior spontaneously, as seen in systems ranging from social networks and economic markets to swarms of animals and neuronal networks. I study the physics and mathematics that govern the development of such complex behavior, which involves instabilities, pattern formation, and synchronization phenomena. I hope to shine light on how living and other natural systems achieve their functions without guidance and to leverage this understanding for engineering technologies like computer processors.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
There are three main public benefits that I hope will come from my work. First, the development of machine learning algorithms is currently booming, and there is a need to incorporate traditional physical understanding into these novel algorithms. I am collaborating with leading scientists at the University of Washington to develop physics-based algorithms for the data-driven discovery of parsimonious models. Second, these new computational techniques promise to shine light on challenging long-standing problems by integrating information across scales in real complex systems. I hope to develop new understanding in the study of complexity that will shine light on important biological, physical, and social phenomena. Lastly, by creating new collaborations with experimentalists working in active matter systems, I hope to create physical reservoir computer prototypes, which have been theoretically studied but will remain poorly understood until they are physically realized. This work will represent an important step to commercializing next-generation computational technologies.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship connects me with excellent mentors and scientific leaders at the University of Washington. This has been especially valuable to me as a new resident to the state. The three years of funding granted by the fellowship provides me with ample time to publish papers, develop a network of collaborators, and gain mentoring experience, giving me a firm foundation to launch my scientific career. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to work with the WRF and interact with the other talented Fellows in the program!

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I am using computational protein design and activity-based protein profiling to design and test novel enzymes that catalyze the breakdown of the plastic polymer polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Specifically, I am using first principles of hydrolytic chemistry to design proteins that can bind PET polymers and catalyze their degradation into monomeric components that can be used in place of fossil fuels to generate new plastics and create a sustainable, circular plastic recycling system.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I’m building new proteins from scratch that can be used to recycle plastic pollutants like water bottles and packaging materials.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
I hope that this research will provide new recycling technologies that provide a more sustainable way to recycle and re-use the plastic products that we utilize in our everyday lives. New recycling plants based on enzyme technologies should help reduce the amount of plastic waste in our environment and provide a more affordable and sustainable alternative to new plastics generated from fossil fuels that contribute to rapidly increasing levels of plastic pollution in the environment.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF postdoctoral Fellowship has given me the freedom to pursue an ambitious project in protein design that addresses a key environmental problem that impacts all of us. Support from the WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship has also enabled a more expansive collaboration network that will be essential to the success of this project and future transition of these scientific endeavors into a real product that the community can use to make plastic products a sustainable component of our lives.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Behavior and thought emerge through the patterned co-activity of neurons that is propagated across the brain on a time scale of milliseconds to seconds. New methods must be developed in order to crack this “brain-wide” form of neural coding in preclinical experiments with appropriate spatiotemporal resolution. Once in place, we will be in a better position to predict the functional architecture of brain dysfunction from a disease-agnostic standpoint and do a better job at translating the efficacy of CNS therapeutics before they reach humans. To reach this goal and through the WRF, I am developing a preclinical assay of brain function that intersects genetic, optical, and computational technology with collaboration across four research groups at UW and Boston University.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I am building a monitor of brain function that will allow me to physically read the minds of mice with the greatest spatiotemporal resolution.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
The end goal of my project will be very useful in CNS drug development, through providing an advanced and novel biomarker of brain function for developers to reliably predict drug action prior to Clinical Trials in humans. This technology can further serve as a preclinical starting point in the current push for precision medicine in psychiatry, by utilizing this “ensemble-omics” approach in preclinical heritability studies in which the interplay of genes, pharmacology, and behavior converge in our biomarker datasets. Ultimately, this work will directly address the mental health epidemic of 21^st century which big pharma is currently failing to fix.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
Simply put, the WRF fellowship has made the ambitious nature of my project more feasible for me to pursue independently at my career stage. Additionally, it has helped establish a groundwork for networking that aids the technology development from both academic and private perspectives. The professional development gained through the WRF is invaluable!

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
My research program draws on my background in plant ecology and evolution as well as my more recent training in plant ecophysiology, stable isotope biogeochemistry, and landscape ecohydrology. Within this interdisciplinary framework, I take an integrated approach to investigating the physiological ecology of forest ecosystems as they respond to climate change, with a particular focus on drought impacts. My newest research project supported by the WRF involves quantifying the vulnerability of the dominant tree species in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest to mortality in response to climate change-induced reductions in spring snow water availability. The primary goals of this project are to 1) quantify the historical growth responses of each species to past climates using tree ring widths, 2) derive the mechanistic physiological responses of each species to historical drought years using xylem anatomical traits and tree ring isotopes, and 3) predict the comparative vulnerability of each species to dying under future drought scenarios. These goals will be accomplished through collections of tree ring samples from each species in sites that experienced the lowest snow water equivalent and highest climatic water deficit during the recent 2015 drought, which predominantly occurred in the North Cascades. Statistical comparisons of xylem anatomical traits (e.g. tracheid wall thickness, lumen diameter), dual-isotope trajectories (e.g. annual δ¹³C and δ¹⁸O signatures), and isotope-derived water use efficiencies (e.g. μmol of carbon gained per mol of water lost) will be used to predict which species are most vulnerable to dying during years of reduced water availability and increased temperatures. These results will directly inform management efforts geared towards protecting the stability of the ecosystem services that this forest provides through the future.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
My research program focuses on the intersection between forests, soils, and climate. I aim to understand how forests are impacted by climate change, particularly in response to drought and increased temperatures. To date, my research has focused on how the physiological impacts of rising temperatures and water deficits vary across different forest tree species as a function of their root access to water and differences in their tolerance to drought. My works aims to better understand and predict the vulnerability of different forest species to mortality under the warmer, drier conditions that arise with climate change, and how exposure to these conditions varies with topography across different forest landscapes. I use a range of field, lab, and computational methods to quantify and predict plant stress, water use, carbon acquisition, and mortality. My results help inform management efforts geared toward protecting and preserving the ecosystem services that forests provide, such as carbon sequestration, water filtration, and air purification.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
The poor physiological performance of Washington’s forests in response to climate change has tremendous potential for negatively impacting our local economy, public health, and overall quality of life due to its consequent impacts to the life-sustaining ecosystem services that our forests provide. My research directly addresses WRF’s goals of benefiting Washingtonians, as it allows me to help inform State and Indigenous management planning efforts to help protect and maintain the resilience of our different forested systems to climate change.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
My work has significantly improved due to the support I have with my WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship, as it has allowed me to establish my own long-term forest research and monitoring system. With this system, I can continue expanding my research program with a specific focus on Washingtonian forests, while simultaneously building the essential academic relationships and collaborations required for me to advance my career in academia. Moreover, support from this fellowship allows me to continue my tradition of training, mentoring, and collaborating with students to help them achieve their own career goals.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I use massively parallel reporter assays and deep learning to investigate how sequence and subcellular localization together modulate RNA stability. This work will provide new insights into RNA degradation regulation and diseases involving misbalanced RNA levels. I will apply predictive models to elucidate determinants of RNA degradation and to engineer RNA longevity for mRNA therapeutics applications.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I study how RNA, an essential molecule that is found in all forms of life, is degraded in human cells. RNAs play critical roles in maintaining life, and specific abundances of RNAs are necessary to maintain healthy cells. RNAs are produced based on the cell’s needs, and RNAs that are no longer needed are degraded. However, there are many forms of RNA degradation mechanisms within human cells and act in specific locations of the cell. When these RNA degradation mechanisms do not function well, then disease could occur. I will interrogate these RNA degradation mechanisms with highly parallel experiments, and use machine learning to better understand and predict RNA degradation outcomes.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
My work will deepen our understanding of RNA degradation through massively parallel assays, computational analyses, and creation of new prediction and design tools. RNA degradation is an ubiquitous process that affects all RNAs and thus RNA degradation research has implications in all kingdoms of life, human disease, and bioengineering and synthetic biology applications.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship will enable me to pursue independent research directions to meet unmet public needs and career development in the exciting Washington research environment. Specifically, the Washington Research Foundation’s funding will aid my goals through continued training as an interdisciplinary scientist while working on impactful RNA degradation research.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
In my research, I measure physiological signals (spikes, BOLD signal, etc) and behavior and try to link these together with computational models. At UW my project involves recording from multiple simultaneous Neuropixels electrodes during a sensory selection behavior in mice. Using this dataset I can model how sensory information is transferred between brain areas, e.g. from visual cortex to prefrontal regions. My long-term goal is to use these results to design algorithms for brain-machine interface use in primates.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I study attention to understand how different brain areas communicate information to each other. Think about when you walk through Seattle. When you are on a sidewalk you might selectively attend to pedestrians, but while in a crosswalk you might shift your attention to the vehicles around you. I teach mice and humans to perform attention tasks like these, while simultaneously measuring neural activity from throughout the brain. This kind of dataset can then be used to build models of cognition. In my work, this would involve looking at how the brain selects out the important visual information (the pedestrians or cars) and sends that information to decision-making areas.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
We know that different areas of the brain are specialized for different purposes such as vision or muscle control. If you implant electrodes into these specialized areas it is possible to build basic prosthetic eyes and limbs. What we don’t yet know how to do is interface with cognitive areas of the brain. My work gives us some of the basic knowledge we need to start moving toward that goal. One of my long-term goals is for my research to eventually lead to interventions that can restore function in neurological disorders of attention.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
With the resources available at UW, the Allen Institute, and in the larger WRF network, Seattle is an ideal place to pursue my research program. The WRF Fellowship gives me the resources to work here in Seattle in a cutting edge electrophysiology lab and the freedom to take on more risk in collaborative projects. The fellowship will also allow me to keep a foot in both human cognitive neuroscience, where I earned my Ph.D., and rodent electrophysiology where I am now working as a postdoc. I aim to be a bridge between these two fields, which I think could benefit from better interdisciplinary communication.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
We apply optical and environmental data measured in situ to investigate distributions of different phytoplankton groups in surface waters on ocean basin scales. Recent advancements in instrumentation allow us to collect imagery data on phytoplankton communities at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution using automated microscopy. We develop algorithms to link the phytoplankton imagery to information extracted from hyperspectral optical measurements. This work is motivated by the upcoming launch of NASA satellite instruments that will provide hyperspectral optical information from space, which in turn will be used to investigate global ocean phytoplankton community composition via the application of our algorithms.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Nearly all life in the ocean is supported by phytoplankton. These single-celled organisms photosynthesize as land plants do, and are extremely diverse in their size, morphology, and ecosystem function. Phytoplankton community composition in the ocean influences carbon and nutrient cycles as well as marine food webs. To study phytoplankton communities on large spatial scales in the ocean, we link optical measurements – essentially measurements of the color and brightness of the water – to the presence of different phytoplankton groups, which in turn are determined using automated microscopy and deep learning techniques. The big-picture views of phytoplankton communities gained from applying our methods gives us the tools to answer important questions about ocean ecosystems, and how they may be changing as the ocean and earth climate shifts.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
I hope to share my findings and communicate with the public through avenues such as public lectures, K-12 school visits, and social media. This sharing of knowledge benefits the public by empowering people to make decisions about how they choose to interact with the marine environment through recreation, consumption of seafood, or support of politicians who take a stance on the promotion of ocean health and protection of resources.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The autonomy provided to me by the WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship funding will allow me to pursue avenues in my research that I am both passionate about and that will be significant contributions to the field of optical oceanography and marine science. I will also have the opportunity to collaborate with experts in other fields such as computer science and genomics to address oceanographic questions in new ways and while taking advantage of cutting-edge technologies.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Current antiviral treatments for HBV infection can effectively suppress HBV replication, but they require long-term maintenance therapy and rarely result in a permanent cure. Antiviral treatments for HBV include reverse transcriptase inhibitors (RTi) that target a cytoplasmic step in the viral replication cycle where viral RNA is transcribed into DNA. The template for the viral RNA is a stable form of the genomic DNA, termed covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA), which is not impacted by RTi treatment. cccDNA is present in the nucleus of infected hepatocytes in a non-integrated form or episome. Even among patients that have cleared acute HBV infections, cccDNA can be detected in the liver, which explains the reactivation seen during immunosuppression in these individuals. Thus, the presence of cccDNA in hepatocytes is a major hurdle for an HBV cure. In my postdoctoral research, I am working on the development of a novel mouse model to investigate and test CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing therapeutics for HBV.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in infancy can lead to chronic infection. If left untreated, chronic HBV infection often results in cirrhosis and liver cancer. Current treatments can help fight the virus and slow its ability to damage the liver, but do not completely remove it from liver cells. Eliminating or inactivating this “reservoir” is crucial to cure HBV infection. I aim to develop a cure for HBV using enzymes that act like molecular scissors to introduce errors in the HBV genome that inactivate its function permanently or eliminate it.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
I hope that my work contributes to the development of novel therapeutics to eradicate HBV chronic viral infection. Although a vaccine has been in existence since the 1980s, HBV infections are still a sizable global health concern. According to the WHO, in 2015, 257 million people worldwide were living with chronic HBV infection. The prevalence of HBV is the highest in the WHO regions of African and Western Pacific, where vaccination coverage at birth or early childhood remains low. Because most people living with chronic HBV today were born before the vaccine introduction, which can range from the 1980s to the early 2000s, the mortality of viral hepatitis is expected to increase if diagnostics and treatments remain lacking in areas with high prevalence.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship will help me achieve my goals by expanding my network and allowing me to develop opportunities to collaborate with local scientists whose goal is to deliver new technologies to the public. Cooperation is what excites me about science; it provides the possibility of improving the quality of people’s lives through innovation and creativity. Additionally, the support provided by WRF will give me the freedom to expand my research program to facilitate the transition to a career as an independent scientist.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Current treatment for out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest follows a largely predefined, one-size-fits-all protocol. This protocol governs the use of defibrillator rhythm analysis and cardioversion shock, medications, chest compressions, artificial respirations, and other therapy. Current survival rates from cardiac arrest are low, but could potentially be improved by a more patient-specific approach whereby therapy is adjusted dynamically in real time based on a patient’s current status. One barrier to this type of precision medicine approach is current defibrillator technology and the inability to assess real-time patient status in detail during active resuscitation. My research is focused on proof-of-concept next-generation defibrillator algorithms to bridge this gap. Using retrospective analysis of electrocardiogram, chest impedance, and other signals acquired by the defibrillator, I work with a team of physicians and engineers to design and validate algorithms to provide a more detailed assessment of real-time patient status. Specific examples include continuous real-time estimation of patient myocardial physiology during ventricular fibrillation (to improve shock timing and optimize duration of cardiopulmonary resuscitation), or performing cardiac rhythm analysis continuously rather than requiring a pause in chest compressions to assess the patient’s rhythm.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?

When someone’s heart stops pumping blood, medics attempt to revive them using a defibrillator. I use recordings of these events to explore ways to make defibrillators smarter.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Survival rates from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest are low, and significant improvements in therapy could potentially save many thousands of lives each year. My group and I have the unique advantage of access to a large data repository of cardiac arrest recordings. My goal is to help develop and publish big-data-based methods for improved defibrillator-guided treatment of cardiac arrest. The hope is that defibrillator manufacturers would eventually implement these methods to improve care and save additional lives.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?

The WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship allows me to continue my current research versus having to potentially cease these projects and explore options in industry. Since research results are not guaranteed or necessarily profitable, this type of work may not otherwise have been allowed to proceed without funding from an organization such as the WRF. The supply budget also has allowed me to purchase computational power to enable use of deep learning methods. Ultimately the WRF funding will enable publication of my results (whether positive or negative), thus furthering our understanding of a major public health burden (cardiac arrest) and its treatment.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I am using computational protein design to create novel enzymes for the biosynthesis of modified natural product molecules. To do this, I am exploring large-scale pooled gene synthesis and high-throughput assays to rapidly screen thousands of computationally designed enzyme variants. These computationally designed enzymes can have many advantages over naturally occurring enzymes, including the use of unnatural cofactors that enable new enzymatic reactions.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Natural product molecules from plants, fungi, and bacteria are a significant source of modern medicines, including antibiotics, anti-cancer drugs, and antimalarials. In addition to their frequent use as drug molecules, natural products are heavily used in agriculture and have potential for use as biofuels and commodity chemicals. However, their harvesting and production can be costly and environmentally unsustainable. Also, many natural product molecules possess undesirable properties, requiring modification of their structures to fulfill unmet public needs. I am using computational protein design tools to create new enzymes that can be used in engineered microbial cells for sustainable bioproduction of modified natural product molecules.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
My work will enable large-scale synthesis of complex molecules that would be difficult to produce sustainably using synthetic chemistry or purely with enzymes found in nature. These molecules can be used as new sources of medicine, and as agricultural and commodity chemicals. By utilizing tools for computational protein design, my work will enable creation of unnatural enzymes that can be incorporated into engineered metabolic pathways to allow microbial biomanufacturing of diverse molecules.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship grants freedom to pursue independent directions in my research and an opportunity to learn from and share my work with a creative and interdisciplinary community of WRF Fellows. In addition, the research allowance will allow me to travel to meetings and learn from experts in my field.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I study the connection between intestinal microbiota and colorectal cancer. Specifically, I’m interested in bacterial production of secondary bile acids that may act as carcinogens or chemoprotectants. In conjunction with this, I also study bacteriophages (phages), which are viruses that infect bacteria. In general, I’m interested in their role in complex microbial communities and how this relates to host health. I would like to develop phage-based therapeutic tools for rational microbiome manipulation.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Microbes are everywhere- including inside of us. Often, we refer to a collection of microbes (bacteria, viruses, and other microbes) and all of their genetic material as a microbiome. I study the human intestinal microbiome. The human microbiome is essential for our health- ranging from immunity to digestion. However, in the large intestine, some types of bacteria (and the chemicals they produce) might increase the risk of developing colorectal cancer. I study these bacteria, and I also study certain types of viruses that kill these bacteria. I hope to figure out connections between these microbes and one’s risk of developing colorectal cancer so that we can develop novel prevention and treatment strategies.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Colorectal cancer is a global leading cause of cancer-related deaths. I hope that my research on the intestinal microbiome, and specifically bacteriophages, will meet the need for improvement of current colorectal cancer detection and treatment methods. In general, I hope my work contributes to our growing understanding of the role of the microbiome in human health and disease.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF postdoc fellowship has given me the opportunity to conduct meaningful research in an emerging field. It allowed me to join a top tier institution and also be a part of the larger scientific community in Washington. Overall, the WRF fellowship provides me with essential support to achieve my career goals while living in a place I love!

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Skin-resident macrophages are known to protect against pathogens and infections, as well as clear debris from sites of injury. However, whether these immune cells directly aid in axonal regeneration or axon guidance after injury is unknown. The repopulation of nerves after injury is paramount, as loss of reinnervation in the skin ultimately will lead to loss of sensation at that site.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Our skin is a dual-function organ. Not only is it the first line of defense against environmental insults and pathogens, but it also acts as a sensory organ. Oftentimes, our everyday sensation of touch, pain, and temperature are taken for granted. Since our skin constantly undergoes damage and remodeling, skin repair is incredibly important. A phenomenon following skin injury that is poorly understood is how our neurons successfully reinnervate the skin to restore it to full functionality. After skin injury, large amounts of debris are generated from dying cells, and it is the responsibility of tissue-resident immune cells to aid in the clearance of this debris. The underlying goals of my research will be to examine how these immune cells interact with neurons to successfully reinnervate the skin after injury.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Patients with diabetic neuropathy and chemotherapy-induced neuropathy have decreased sensation due to lack of skin innervation. Going forward, my basic research questions will be informative for these conditions, in which I hope to better understand reinnervation after injury.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
Obtaining a WRF Fellowship has allowed me to generate and carry out research ideas independent of my postdoctoral advisor. Ultimately, this will aid in my long-term goal of obtaining a faculty position of my own. I am also grateful for the additional research support and symposium opportunities provided by the WRF.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
It has been proposed that glial function may predict the selective vulnerability of brain regions to specific diseases and age-related cognitive decline. However, it remains elusive how changes in glial gene expression and function could impact cognitive decline, neurodegeneration, and glial dysfunction present in aging and pathological states. Our lab has shown that in C. elegans, glia use specific molecular cues to regulate neuron morphology and sensory behaviors, suggesting that glia could affect neuronal aging and longevity. My project aims to look at how different glia impact neural aging by specifically monitoring and manipulating a single neuron’s interactions with two different subsets of glia. In addition, I am performing single cell RNAseq on each glial subtype in young and aged animals to uncover changes in the molecular profile of these cells. Long-term, my aim is to uncover novel glia-dependent neuroprotective pathways that can be exploited to delay or block neurodegeneration.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
The brain allows us to perceive and interact with the world around us. Nerve cells or neurons talk to each other through networks and this allows for the complex calculations which are the basis of our thoughts, emotions and actions. During aging, the connections between neurons deteriorate and this causes people to become more forgetful and even get certain diseases. However, neurons could not function at all without another type of brain cell called glia. Neurons and glia together make up the brain and they are extremely interconnected with each other. Because human brains have billions of neurons and billions of glia, our lab uses nematodes called C.elegans to study the connections between neurons and glia. Although nematode brains are very small, nematodes still perceive and interact with the world around them using complicated networks between neurons and glia. My project focuses on how glial cells age and how aged glia affect the neurons to which they are connected. The long term of this project is to find signals within glia that will keep neurons young in aged brains.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Aging is the biggest risk factor for cognitive decline and most neurodegenerative diseases. Effective treatments that delay or block the progression of age-related neurodegenerative disorders are critical as it is expected that by 2050 more than 20% of the total US population will be age 65 and older. Our findings will provide the foundation for better understanding changes in neuron-glia interactions during brain aging and may direct research in other species or disease models towards better treatment strategies for age-related neurological disorders.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
I am very grateful to be a WRF fellow! Research funding is very competitive, especially during these uncertain times, and applying for such opportunities is time consuming. Receiving the WRF Fellowship has allowed me to focus my time and efforts on my research project full time. The fellowship is also allowing me to explore high risk ideas that will one day direct me toward becoming an independent investigator. In addition, being part of the WRF community has allowed me to form essential connections within the greater Seattle area. I look forward to presenting my data and receiving feedback from the diverse WRF community as my project progresses along.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I am pushing the boundaries of light responsive dynamic biomaterials. Current light responsive technologies are limited to use on the benchtop, they never make it into living organisms. I want to change that.

I am currently synthesizing a new series of photocleavable crosslinkers to tether bioactive proteins to a hydrogel biomaterial. These crosslinkers will respond to red and near-IR light, which can penetrate deeper into tissue than high energy blue and UV light. This material will help us study certain processes that are difficult to mimic on the benchtop, like the immune response to biomaterials and wound healing.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I’m developing a new class of implantable materials designed to eliminate the human body’s natural ability to reject an implant. These materials are designed to release drugs through small doses of light, letting researchers use light to trigger events inside mice and humans. We see these materials being very useful in the development of lab-grown organs for better acceptance in organ transplants.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Making strides in the development of dynamic biomaterials will help us as we work towards creating organs on the benchtop. I hope my work will enable other researchers to design an appropriate strategy to create their organ of choice and implant it successfully, doing my part to solve the organ transplant crisis within my lifetime.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF Postdoc Fellowship has opened doors for me professionally as a scientist and future professor. By providing funds to travel, I am now able to visit and train under collaborators across the country, bringing their expertise back to Washington. The multiple opportunities to network with Seattle’s leading scientists and technologists across academia and industry is invaluable as I build my future career.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
There is a huge diversity in microbial organisms and the roles that each can serve within a specific environment and community can differ greatly. In order to understand these species and strain-specific roles, we need to be able to understand who is there, what are they doing, and importantly how are they doing it. To probe mechanistic questions about the functions of specific genes, we rely on genetic engineering approaches. However, the vast majority of bacteria that can be grown in a laboratory cannot be genetically engineered, largely due to the presence of innate defense systems that detect and degrade incoming DNA as non-self. While these systems evolved to protect against invading viral DNA, human-designed genetic tools are also susceptible to detection and degradation. I use a combination of synthetic microbiology, molecular biology and biochemistry to develop reproducible methodologies to overcome these innate bacterial defenses in a colorectal cancer-associated bacterium. Our goal is to develop genetic engineering approaches that will allow us to mechanistically probe at the role of this bacterium in the context of human disease and generate new methodologies to facilitate the genetic engineering of any bacterium of interest.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Many bacteria have been shown to play important roles in human health, both positively in the maintenance of a healthy state and negatively in the causation of specific diseases. I am interested in asking whether a specific bacterium enriched in colorectal cancer tumors contributes to disease onset, progression or treatment efficacy. In order to understand what this bacterium is doing and how it’s doing it, we require the ability to genetically engineer (add, remove, or modify) specific genes to understand their specific functions during infection. The majority of bacteria that we can grow in a laboratory are resistant to current genetic engineering approaches because bacteria have evolved mechanisms to protect their genome from foreign changes, which hampers our efforts. We develop tools to bypass these defense mechanisms and my goal is to implement and further develop methodologies for the successful genetic engineering of my bacteria of interest in order to probe at and understand its role in colorectal cancer.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Ultimately, the goal is to understand whether targeting of this bacterial agent is a therapeutic avenue for the treatment of colorectal cancer (CRC). CRC is the third most common cancer worldwide and the second most common cancer in the state of Washington. A high proportion of advanced CRC patients become unresponsive to chemotherapeutic treatment over time, therefore exploring potential causative agents and their contribution to disease could unveil novel therapeutic targets.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship will provide me with invaluable scientific freedom to apply creative, high-risk and high-reward approaches to help solve the fundamental barrier to bacterial genetic intractability.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
In our lab we study the underlying pathology of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other tauopathies. Tauopathies are disorders resulting from the aberrant aggregation of the protein tau. In order to identify genes that worsen tau aggregation and neurodegeneration, our lab developed a transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans (nematode) model which overexpresses human tau. This model led to the discovery of sut-2, a gene which promotes tau toxicity. In humans, the homolog of SUT-2 protein is MSUT2. MSUT2, an RNA binding protein, is abundant in neurons and correlates with an increase in pathological tau in Alzheimer’s disease patients. The Kraemer lab has shown that MSUT2 knockout in mouse models protects against tauopathy by reducing the abundance of tau deposits, preserving neuronal health, and preserving memory. We hypothesize that inhibiting MSUT2 activity with small molecules may be a viable strategy to treat AD. Our goal is to identify lead compounds with potential clinical potential.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Tangles are a major hallmark seen in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) brain cells, or neurons. These tangles are composed of the protein tau, which has started to clump up and disrupt the normal function of neurons. This disruption in the normal function of neurons eventually leads to cell death and the symptoms we associate with AD, including loss of memory. It is the goal of our work to find new drugs that target the protein tau and to eventually get these compounds to the clinic for the treatment of AD.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
The last 20 years of Alzheimer’s research has unfortunately resulted in no disease-modifying therapeutics. No treatments halt or even slow the progression of AD. It is our hope that by targeting novel proteins, we might discover new therapeutics for the treatment of AD.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
Without the generous support of the Washington Research Foundation this work would not be possible. The WRF has already allowed us to screen thousands of compounds resulting in exciting preliminary lead candidates. WRF support has meant independence for me as a researcher, allowing the exploration of projects not currently funded in the lab. The WRF has provided numerous networking opportunities and has followed through on a goal to integrate scientific discovery, entrepreneurship, and community resources.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I am researching the community assembly dynamics within biofilms that consist of aerobic nitrifiers, anaerobic ammonia oxidizers (Anammox), and heterotrophs that perform denitrification or dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonia. By understanding the conditions that promote the syntrophic cooperation between nitrifiers and Anammox, we will be better able to harness them in wastewater treatment systems.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
In order to remove ammonia from wastewater, different types of microorganisms work together by performing different steps or transformations that ideally yield nitrogen gas. How efficiently these microorganisms work is a function of the community structure. My research seeks to identify environmental conditions that will select for a community that is more efficient.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Wastewater treatment plants are critical to protect natural waters from the harmful effects of eutrophication; however, their operation consumes 3-4% of the entire US electricity demand. A significant driver of these costs is running pumps that provide oxygen to nitrifiers, the bacteria that turn ammonia into nitrite and nitrate. My research seeks to identify potential microbial partnerships and environmental conditions that could harness Anammox in main-stream wastewater treatment systems, substantially reducing these energy costs.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
Support from the WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship has allowed me to develop as a scientist by giving me the freedom to pursue my own ideas and experimental approaches and collaborate with other scientists.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Opportunistic viruses such as Epstein-Barr virus, adenovirus, and cytomegalovirus raise mortality rates among hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HCT) recipients. I am generating T-cell receptors that recognize and eliminate these viruses from such patients. The goal is to improve recipients’ quality of life.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Transplants of blood-forming stem cells are a standard of care for people with certain blood diseases like advanced leukemia. They can cure these diseases, but they also come with serious risks. Patients who receive a blood stem cell transplant are vulnerable to viral infections that lead to complications and ultimately death. These viruses are quite common; therefore, people with healthy immune systems can fend them off. But in immune-compromised individuals such as HCT recipients, they can be life-threatening. I am creating smart T cells that can identify and eliminate these viruses in patients following transplant. T cells are immune cells that are responsible for eliminating unhealthy cells such as pathogens and cancers. As a result, scientists have been interested in finding ways to strengthen T-cell responses against disease. This is one of the many goals that the immunotherapy field is hoping to accomplish.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Ultimately, the goal is to increase the longevity of post-transplant patients. I also hope that my research can be applied to the treatment of viral-driven cancers, which comprise up to 20% of cancers worldwide. Fred Hutch has a center-wide initiative aimed at finding cures for pathogen-associated cancers, such as those linked to human papillomavirus (HPV) like cervical cancers and head and neck cancers. Since T cell–based immunotherapeutics have already shown promising results in the treatment of certain cancers, I believe that we can achieve similar, if not better, results in the treatment of viruses and viral-driven cancers.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The Washington Research Foundation will allow me to continue my research and my time in Seattle. Having their support will be invaluable for my success at Fred Hutch.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Single molecule biophysics has become a powerful approach for studying how macro-molecular assemblies drive essential cellular processes. Kinetochores are complex protein machines that drive chromosome segregation during cell division. To do so they must form persistent, load-bearing attachments to dynamic microtubule tips, even as the tips assemble and disassemble under their grip. Kinetochores also sense and correct erroneous attachments and generate ‘wait’ signals to delay anaphase until all the chromosomes are properly attached. Failure of any of these essential functions results in aneuploidy, a hallmark of cancer. I have developed a novel in vitro kinetochore assembly assay that permits real-time imaging of kinetochores as they assemble on centromeric DNA using total internal reflectance fluorescence microscopy. This approach is integrated with optical trapping methods to measure the tip-coupling activity of assembled kinetochores and directly correlate kinetochore composition and dynamics with tip binding capacity; generating a precise understanding of how kinetochore assembly and composition regulate chromosome segregation and cell cycle progression and illuminating how failure of these pathways relates to human diseases such as cancer.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Accurate segregation of duplicated DNA during cell division is essential to all life. In eukaryotes, duplicated chromosomes are segregated by an exquisite molecular machine, the mitotic spindle. Key to chromosome segregation is coupling of duplicated chromosomes to rope-like filaments called microtubules. Microtubules act as a molecular winch that pulls duplicated chromosomes apart. Chromosomes and microtubules are coupled by a large protein complex known as the kinetochore. The kinetochore synchronizes chromosome segregation and regulates the cell cycle to prevent daughter cells from receiving too many or too few chromosomes. Errors in this process can have catastrophic results for the organism. I use force microscopy and fluorescence microscopy to manipulate and observe how kinetochore composition and tension regulate kinetochore function so we can better understand how errors result in human disease.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Chromosome mis-segregation is characteristic of all solid tumors. The most successful anti-cancer drugs ever developed are anti-mitotics that target microtubules. Unfortunately microtubules are involved with many essential non-mitotic cellular processes leading to adverse side effects. Identifying key regulatory steps in kinetochore assembly and function has the potential to revolutionize the development of cancer treatments that specifically target dividing cells. Additionally, the methods we are developing to study kinetochore function can be adopted for studying other biological processes.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF fellowship provides a fantastic opportunity to network with scientists that have a diverse set of skills and experience and will serve as a platform for developing new and productive collaborations. Additionally, the support provided by the WRF for my research has allowed me to continue pursuing my research interests among one of best mitosis research communities in the country here in the Pacific Northwest.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I am working on an interdisciplinary research project attempting to elucidate how the spatial organization of immune cells in tissue microenvironments influence disease progression and treatment outcomes. Specifically, I am utilizing multi-dimensional spectrally resolved confocal microscopy to image the local environments of immune cells, and developing software tools to extract information from these imaging datasets and interrogate cellular composition, tissue architecture, and locations of cell-cell interactions.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I am trying to create 3D schematics of tissues, with cellular resolution positional information, much like the schematics that come with Ikea furniture. In addition to the numbers and types of cells in tissues, the position of cells within tissues affects both how individual cells interact, and how whole organs function. Unlike Ikea furniture, even small tissues have millions of component parts, meaning I must develop software tools, which use images of tissues, and machine learning to create my schematics. These tools simultaneously look at millions of cells and distill their information down to a few key, understandable relationships. This will allow us to understand where different types of cells are, how they are interacting with each other, and what the structure of their host tissue is.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
A better understanding of how the spatial organization of immune cells influences disease will provide significant benefit, yielding advances on both the basic research and clinical levels. Developing analysis tools directly in an immunology lab will yield more user friendly software, which will place powerful quantitative analysis techniques in the hands of biologists, who will direct and shape the forefront of immunological drug discovery, tissue exploration, and diagnostics.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The unique nature of the WRF grant allows me greater creative freedom and to keep my tools open source, making them available to the wider scientific community. This improves the dissemination of new technology across wider fields of study, which ultimately promotes better science and collaborations in the state of Washington. The excellent facilities and broad expertise of the faculty in the Gerner lab and the Immunology department at the University of Washington, with the support network of WRF affiliates, will enable me to become a better scientist and a more impactful researcher.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
Proteins are some of the most important functional units in our cells. To make proteins, our cells turn on genes (these are encoded by our DNA) to produce a “recipe” for making proteins. This “recipe” is called RNA, and the cell follows the instructions on this recipe to make a protein.

If you were making a dessert, you could follow a recipe to make, for example, a chocolate cake. You could also take that same recipe and change one ingredient – say, use vanilla instead of chocolate icing – and now you have a very similar, but different cake. The RNA “recipe” used to make proteins (the “cake” in this analogy), can be modified in a similar way. This process of swapping ingredients is known as “RNA alternative splicing”. Using RNA alternative splicing, a cell can make many different types of proteins that are similar but have different (and important!) functions.

I study how RNA alternative splicing contributes to normal human development and, when this RNA splicing goes awry, how the production of “bad recipes” causes human disease.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Many human diseases, including most cancers, are characterized by major defects in RNA alternative splicing, and a single diseased cell can produce thousands of abnormal RNA molecules. If we can identify how each of these RNA molecules contributes to patient symptoms, we can correct them using a technology called “antisense oligonucleotides.” However, because so many abnormal RNAs are expressed in any given disease state, it is hard to search through them all. My work is focused on developing better tools to find the needle in the haystack and, once we find it, correct it.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
I am very energetic, I have LOTS of ideas, and I eventually want to run my own independent research lab. This combination of traits means that there are frequently research directions that I want to pursue independent of my primary mentor. The WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship makes this possible. Furthermore, funding from the WRF has opened many doors for me to share my work with the scientific community.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Zebrafish possesses a remarkable capacity to regenerate an entire functional retina after injury. This regeneration is accomplished by a retinal glial cell called Müller glia. Müller glia exist in all vertebrate species, but their regenerative potential has been lost in the mammalian retina. Our lab has recently shown that transgenically overexpressing proneural transcription factors in Müller glia allows for functional regeneration of neurons in damaged adult mouse retina. My research is further investigating the molecular and cell-signaling mechanisms to improve Müller glia-mediated retinal regeneration. For my WRF project, I am investigating how microglia, the innate immune cell of the retina, impacts the neurogenesis that occurs during regeneration.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
The central nervous system in mammalian species lacks the regenerative capacity seen in fish and amphibians. The loss of neurons in the mammalian brain, spinal cord, and retina is permanent. We study the retina, where loss of neurons underlies the majority of vision threatening diseases like macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and glaucoma. Using lessons from how fish regenerate their retinas we have recently developed strategies that allow functional regeneration of neurons in the mammalian retina. However, limitations still exist and not enough neurons are regenerated to restore lost vision. One of the barriers to regeneration could be the inflammation that accompanies retinal injury and disease. My projects focus on how to manipulate the retinal immune system to allow better neuronal regeneration to occur after cell loss.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Overall, I think this work will help better guide strategies towards our ultimate goal of replacing neurons that are lost to retinal disease. In the retina, we are investigating regeneration from an endogenous cellular source, but other regenerative approaches involving viral gene therapy and stem cell transplantation also heavily involve an inflammatory response. Therefore, I hope the mechanisms I uncover as to how the innate immune system impacts progenitor proliferation, neurogenesis, and neural survival will be applicable to a broad range of regenerative strategies. I also think lessons learned in the retina will be useful to other CNS structures like brain and spinal cord.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF fellowship provides a unique opportunity to early postdoctoral fellows at a stage where we have big ideas with not much preliminary data. This allows us a creative freedom to chase scientific projects that may have been difficult to pursue under the traditional grant funding agencies. I am excited to be part of the WRF team as I believe their approach to funding leads to projects with potential for the largest scientific advances.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I am engineering enzymes to create a new metabolic pathway for assimilating formate in microbes. The hope is that this will allow biofuel-producing organisms to utilize formate, which is a feedstock that can be generated readily from carbon dioxide and electricity.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I’m creating new microbes that can produce biofuels from formic acid in a carbon-neutral process. Formic acid can be made from carbon dioxide using electricity as an energy source. Therefore, the microbes I create could provide a new source of liquid fuels that does not require sugars from agricultural crops. Instead, this process could use renewable energy and sequester CO2 directly from the atmosphere. The underlying technology I develop could also have applications in improving crop yield.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
I hope that my research will eventually contribute to two of our greatest societal challenges: mitigating climate change and improving crop yields.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
It has allowed me to travel and learn from experts in my field around the world. The additional research funds it provides allows me to perform more experiments to try more hypotheses to give me more chances for success in my research.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
The primary question that motivates me is: how do organisms make efficient use of limited information to perform complex tasks? Insects are excellent model systems to investigate sparse and efficient sensing due to their small nervous systems and experimental tractability. Taking the hawkmoth as a model system, I study how information from a small number of mechanoreceptors on the wings are used in flight control. I use a combination of experimental and computational techniques to study how these sensors respond during flight and how one might optimally array a set of these sensors to best provide feedback during flight. This work will not only contribute to our understanding of receptor properties used for guiding flight in a biological system, but it also advances methods in sparse sensing, particularly for spatio-temporal inputs, which will inform the development of a variety of technologies.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I’m interested in how animals sense the world around them and use this information to guide behavior. In general, an animal can only obtain limited information about its surroundings. (We can only hear a limited range of sound frequencies, for example.) I hope to understand which features of the environment an animal’s limited budget of sensory resources is devoted to, and why this might be beneficial for the animal’s survival. I study these questions in the moth because it uses a relatively small number of sensors in the wing to help control its flight. My work not only gives us insight into biological systems, but will help guide the development of technologies where sensors must be efficiently allocated, particularly in engineered flight systems.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
I hope that the knowledge generated from this project will guide the development of new nature-inspired technologies, not only in flight systems but also in other applications, such as medical imaging or autonomous navigation, that rely on efficient computation.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF Postdoc Fellowship allows me to work in an outstanding computational neuroscience community at the University of Washington and further affords me the freedom to work with experts across several disciplines. The Fellowship will also allow me to attend several conferences, where I will be able to showcase the work of myself and my collaborators to a larger community. I also hope that affiliation with WRF will help me build connections and share ideas with a local community of innovators who are similarly interested in translating research insights into real-world applications.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
To describe long-term change in the economic and nutritional value of fishes, I will quantify the trophic downgrading of Puget Sound fishes over the past 100 years. In addition to better understanding long-term change in Puget Sound fish populations, this study will resolve one of the most significant issues limiting the use of compound specific stable isotope analysis (CSIA) on preserved specimens, thereby making available for CSIA the >1 billion liquid-preserved specimens stored in natural history collections globally.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
The diet of fish-eating fish has changed as human harvest of fish has intensified. When the diets of fish change, the nutritional value people can obtain from those fish likely changes, too. I am measuring how fish diet and nutritional value has changed over the past century by conducting chemical analyses on specimens held in North America’s largest ichthyology collection, at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
This research will aid in reshaping current management practices of commercial fishes, providing a historical baseline for managers to compare against current stocks, and thus providing a means to improve the quality and sustainability of one of the most important food resources of the Pacific Northwest.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The methods used in this study are among the most advanced in the field of stable isotope analysis and also require a significant amount of time to complete. The Washington Research Foundation’s network of experts and long-term financial assistance will allow this project to successfully come to fruition.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I am developing new devices that transduce small changes in ion concentration to large charges in electrical current for applications in biosensing and bioelectronics interfaces. Using insights gained from imaging these materials at very small length scales, I establish new design principles that lead to more efficient devices. For example, by investigating and then optimizing ion and electronic transport at small length scales, we can boost overall device efficiency and speed.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
There is a language barrier between how biological systems communicate and how human-made electronics transfer information that prevents these two disparate systems from communicating efficiently. Overcoming this language barrier requires new technologies that translate biological signals into electronic outputs (and vice versa) with high efficiency and speed. My work focuses on developing new interface technologies that improve communications between biological systems and human-made electronics.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
The new interface platform that we are developing should help improve many technologies that rely on interfacing biological systems and human-made electronics, such as biosensing, artificial limbs, and implantable devices.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship grants me the freedom to pursue my own interests, while providing the resources and guidance to help translate discoveries made in a research lab into viable commercial products that benefit the public.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Over the past few decades, colloidal nanomaterials syntheses have enabled the production of nanomaterials with arbitrary compositions, geometries, and dopants distributions. However, deterministically assembling colloidal nanomaterials into devices remains challenging. When we want to attach nanoparticles, we’re restricted to lithography, which has severe limitations in materials properties. In my research, I’m building an optical printer that uses radiation pressure from lasers to assemble nanoparticles onto a surface. Because nanoparticles have size-dependent properties, using light enables simultaneous size selection during printing. I will use an optical printer to create single nanowire transistors and waveguides with single nanoparticles for quantum computing.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
While we’ve made huge strides in creating nanomaterials, we’ve don’t have many great ways of assembling these into individual devices—it’s pretty hard to pick up a nanocrystal 10,000 times thinner than your hair and put it next to another one! For example, if you wanted to make a transistor out of a single nanowire, right now, you’d have to synthesize billions of nanowires in a solution, drop them onto a surface, find the right one, and then deposit custom electrodes on top of it. It’s not easy. I’m developing scalable techniques to assemble individual nanomaterials into devices with light by building a 3D printer for nanomaterials. It turns out that highly focused light can induce pressure on nanomaterials, which offers the ability to assemble individual nanomaterials into devices. I’m building a tool to leverage that effect to assemble nanomaterials into arbitrary structures.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
For years, we’ve heard stories about the wild possibilities of nanotechnology. With my research, I want to make these possibilities a reality, so that we can see quantum computing or nanoparticle computing within 10 years.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
In short, the WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship made my research possible. Big, long-term projects like this research take time to troubleshoot and develop. In a climate of questionable extended funding, the WRF offers a unique chance—I couldn’t find any other three-year fellowships—to take a shot at big ideas.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I study mechanisms of virus replication across diverse hosts and develop platform technologies that exploit these various mechanisms to express a protein of interest and drive distinct immune responses to that protein. This involves probing the virus-host interface to understand the relationship between viral factors and host responses so that we can utilize the former to shape the latter in developing interventions.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I am trying to develop a variety of tools that we in the research community can use to rapidly respond to outbreaks of emerging diseases. Part of that response is rapid identification of the disease-causing agent by a variety of diagnostic strategies as well as halting transmission by deploying vaccines and therapeutics.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
I hope to establish a workflow and the necessary tools to enable rapid response to emerging infectious diseases. In the process, I aim to develop vaccines and diagnostics for many established diseases in preparation for those yet to come.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship has enabled me to pursue ideas distinct from my mentors and establish a research program that is complementary to the mission of my institute. Additionally, the network of outstanding scientists associated with the WRF is proving to be invaluable.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I study the mechanism of nanoparticle nucleation and growth in the context of developing luminescent nanomaterials for display applications. Specifically, various III-V semiconducting nanomaterials that are used in new color-pure displays have been shown to demonstrate non-classical pathways for particle nucleation and growth. By learning more about these processes, I hope to develop better strategies for synthesizing high-performance nanomaterials for these applications.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?

In our everyday world, the physical properties of materials (color, melting point, conductivity, etc) are not dependent on the size or quantity of the material. However, when size dimensions of semiconducting material are reduced to the nanometer scale, many physical properties become dependent on the size of these so-called nano-materials. These phenomena are used for many purposes and I’m trying to control what color these materials emit by understanding how the materials assemble themselves at the atomic and molecular level. This will lead to more efficient, environmentally benign, and color-pure displays in TVs, computers and phones.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?

Americans today spend over 8 hours a day in front of screens, a statistic that has certainly increased since the covid-19 pandemic. Ensuring that TVs and monitors are energy efficient, are composed of environmentally non-toxic materials, and can be recycled back into component parts continues to be an important aspect to sustainability in the 21st century. Future display technologies will involve thinner and flexible displays that display all colors visible to the human eye and nanomaterials will play a critical role in these devices. Furthermore, the fundamental principles of nanoparticle nucleation and growth can be applied across a wide range.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
With my WRF fellowship, I’ve had the opportunity to engage in high-risk, high-reward research that is not tied to normal funding cycles. As part of this research, I’ve had the opportunity to contribute to multiple collaborations at the University of Washington that have studied ultra-fast photophysical properties of these materials and integrated these materials into photonic devices for quantum computing applications. I’ve also had the opportunity to mentor graduate and undergraduate scientists and have presented my work to policy makers and legislators. This work has also resulted in multiple patent filings and peer-reviewed publications, including open access journals. I’m incredibly grateful to the Washington Research Foundation for the opportunity to do this research and contribute to the scientific community in the state of Washington.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I study how neuron network structure determines brain function. Artificial neural networks, originally inspired by the brain, are proving to be incredibly powerful tools for machine learning. However, we still know very little about why they work so well. On the other hand, our brains are the most complex known objects in the universe and much more flexible learning machines than any extant artificial network. We have a lot to learn from biology that can inform our algorithms, while we also rely on data analysis algorithms to understand modern neuroscience experiments.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I use computers to study how the brain works. This means analyzing data to explain what’s going on in experiments as well as theories to explain why the neurons do what they do. Math is important, because it’s the language of information, and our brains are information processing machines.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
There will be many advances in machine intelligence that come from better understanding of the brain, and machine learning algorithms are everywhere these days. On the medical side, brain-machine interface devices are part of an emerging set of therapies for conditions such as paralysis and Parkinson’s disease. We need more understanding to implement these therapies in the best way possible.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
It’s given me the opportunity to stay in Seattle, an area I love, and the freedom to pursue my own research agenda.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I am a climate dynamicist. Specifically, I use instrumental, paleoclimate, and the latest climate model data to study the sources and impacts of climate variability at annual to century timescales. I am currently using data assimilation to combine paleoclimate and climate model data to study climate variability and its associated dynamics during the last millennium.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I am interested in how internal climate variations will combine with global warming to impact humans and the environment. I hope my research will help us understand more about how future climate change will unfold: will future warming occur relatively smoothly, like a ramp, or in fits and starts, like an uneven staircase? Furthermore, how will warming and climate variability combine to impact communities and ecosystems?

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
I plan to study how warming and internal climate variations will combine to affect coastal ecosystems and fisheries. Specifically, I am interested in how climate change will affect toxic Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB), which can cause widespread, costly fisheries closures. Recent research suggests that warming of the ocean surface has already expanded the niche of toxic HABs. Unusually warm temperatures off the U.S. west coast in 2015 set the stage for a toxic HAB that forced closures of the commercial dungeness crab fisheries that led to revenue losses of more than $90 million. My research will focus on answering how regional climate variability will combine with global climate change to impact future toxic algal blooms and fisheries.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship is allowing me to work with a world-renowned group of researchers at the University of Washington and the NOAA Northwest Fisheries. Specifically, the Fellowship is allowing me to learn new data assimilation techniques and giving me the opportunity to apply my climate research background to study how climate variability and change will affect the Pacific Northwest.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
Our group develops mathematical models of HIV in the context of cure. We are particularly interested in the HIV reservoir, and how proliferation of latently infected cells contributes to persistence of the virus during antiretroviral therapy. I am personally working on the interface of modeling and phylodynamics to make use of available HIV sequence and viral dynamic data simultaneously.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I’m a physicist and I use mathematics to describe how the HIV virus grows and evolves within the human body. We hope to understand the complex interplay between the human immune system and the virus and our ultimate goal is to eliminate the virus and develop a cure.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
The HIV/AIDS epidemic still affects millions around the globe. While antiretroviral therapy can suppress the virus, not all persons infected with HIV can tolerate, afford, or access this transformative medication. A cure for HIV is still desperately needed to decrease the global burden of AIDS, and we hope our research will contribute directly to design of the optimal HIV cure or prevention strategy.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF Fellowship provides me an unparalleled opportunity to grow my research program in Seattle. By allowing me to work independently and leverage my strong local collaborative network, the WRF gives me the time to collect preliminary data that may grow into future grant proposals and an independent investigator position.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
My research is aimed at providing the research community with tools for precisely controlling the soluble factors around cells spatially and temporally. The methods I am developing are designed to enable studies of how populations of cells sense and respond to the types of signal patterns that govern physiological processes in the body. For example, I am working to use these tools to understand how stem cells interpret signals that control development, specifically morphogen signal gradients.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
My goal is to be able to bridge the differences in complexity between how we study cells in the laboratory and how cells experience their environment in the body. I am focusing on the dissolved signals that cells use to communicate with each other as the signals spread from cell to cell in tissues. Patterns of these signals coordinate cell functions so that cells can work together to perform complex processes like embryonic development, wound healing, and day-to-day tissue maintenance. The technologies I am developing will allow scientists to control and study signal patterns in the lab so that we can better understand how cells communicate and how we can help direct cells during disease and healing.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
My hope is that my research will improve our ability to understand how cells communicate. It is my goal to use this understanding and the ability to control signal patterns to expand our capabilities for directing cell functions. Achieving these goals will allow us to use cells’ innate abilities to signal and respond to each other for applications like tissue engineering and treatment of diseases affecting cell-to-cell communication.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
This Fellowship has allowed me to focus on this research, to share my work, and to learn more about making an idea into a product that others can use and benefit from.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
I am developing a 3D-printed, lightweight liquid-hydrogen fuel tank for use in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). This tank incorporates the heat exchanger into the tank walls to reduce insulation and minimize tank mass. My research includes evaluation of suitable tank materials and permeation barriers, and the development of the liquid-hydrogen fueling system required to refuel these tanks.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I am developing a lightweight liquid-hydrogen fuel tank to increase the reliability and flight times of drones. By pairing this hydrogen tank with a fuel cell, these systems can provide several hours of electricity to power fixed-wing and multirotor aircrafts enabling the use of drones for applications like package delivery, gas and power line inspections, forest fire monitoring, etc.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
The state of Washington has always been a world leader in energy production and storage. Through this work I hope to expand the use of clean hydrogen for the transportation sector to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
The WRF Postdoctoral Fellowship has provided the opportunity to continue my research to promote hydrogen as a leading clean fuel. WRF also provides the expertise and resources necessary to commercialize my technologies to provide the largest benefit to the region.

How do you describe your research to colleagues?
The main problem in building a functional quantum computer is scalability. We know how to make one qubit, but how do we link together enough qubits to build a scalable computer? In several platforms, the problems are photon loss and low emission rates. We are tackling this by using integrated photonic chips to enhance the emission rate and route/process the light more efficiently on-chip. Our particular qubit system is the nitrogen vacancy center in diamond, but this type of integrated photonics work is currently of interest in several qubit platforms.

How do you describe your research to non-scientists?
I’m trying to build a quantum computer. It doesn’t work yet because we only have one bit, but we’re working on that part now.

What public benefit do you hope will come from your work?
Scalable, commercial quantum computation within the next 10 years. Barring that, I’d like to see photonics fabrication, even in odd materials, as easy as silicon electronics fabrication.

What difference has the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship made to your work?
Networking with other scientists and innovators in the greater Seattle area has so far been a fantastic component of the Fellowship.