UW MOLES welcomes 16 students to its 2025 Ph.D. cohort

The University of Washington Molecular Engineering and Sciences Institute (MolES) is excited to introduce the newest cohort of Ph.D. candidates to the Molecular Engineering program. Get to know our new students.

Anna Amadu Somah
Anna is passionate about advancing clean energy technologies and is particularly interested in how data science and machine learning can accelerate discoveries in this field. She hopes to apply computational and experimental approaches to address challenges in energy storage and conversion, thereby developing more efficient and sustainable solutions. She aims to build a strong foundation in molecular engineering while contributing to impactful research that bridges advanced data-driven methods with clean energy innovation. She has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana and an M.S. in Chemical Engineering (data science option) from the University of Washington.

Madelyn Atkins
Madelyn is interested in utilizing biomaterials and synthetic biology for drug delivery and therapeutic applications. As an undergraduate at the University of Kansas, she researched the impact of vape additives on the viscoelastic properties of model lung surfactants in Dr. Dhar’s lab. She has her B.S. in Chemical Engineering and is a UW College of Engineering Dean’s Fellow.

Gaby Bastidas Reinoso
Gaby is interested in protein engineering applied toward improving cancer therapeutics, including cellular therapies and antibody-drug conjugates. Through her work, she aims to expand her expertise in immunology and explore ways to harness the immune system’s power to treat cancer. In line with my passion for immunology and protein engineering, I am also interested in vaccine design.  She has a UW College of Engineering Dean’s Fellowship and a Hispanic Scholar Fund Scholarship. She has her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Juyoung Choi
Juyoung is interested in understanding and designing biological mechanisms through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates deep learning with life sciences. He is particularly excited about creating new enzymes or developing tools to model and engineer biological networks and signaling pathways. He has conducted research across a wide range of biological systems and has a Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies (KFAS) fellowship. Juyoung holds a B.S. in Life Sciences, a B.S. in Mathematics, and a B.S. in Chemical and Physical Biology, which integrates physics and chemistry. Additionally, he completed the MIT MicroMasters program in Statistics and Data Science.

Mirina Enderlin
Mirina is interested in developing more efficient and sustainable materials for energy storage and conversion. Whether by developing methods of recycling materials, improving longevity of materials, or using fewer toxic materials to begin with, she intends to understand and develop solutions through the development of the nano materials that make up energy storage and conversion devices. She has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Arizona.

Lay Heng Teng
Lay is interested in researching the immune system to learn how to effectively harness it for the development of new medicines and treatments. As an undergraduate, she studied human neutrophil phagocytic spreading on pathogenic surfaces, which introduced me to the field of immunology. Then she worked as a research specialist at Emory University, where she studied how motor neurons in songbirds communicate with each other and assembled electrode arrays. Afterwards, she worked as a medical device engineer, where she helped develop implantable devices to treat central nervous system disorders. She has a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of California, Davis.

Annie Li
Annie is interested in combining her interests in biomedical engineering and social justice to improve health care for all. In particular, she is interested in designing equitable preventive measures, diagnostics, and treatment for infectious diseases. As an undergraduate, Annie explored different ways to meet societal needs through research, from genome and epigenome-wide association studies to analyze asthma health disparities, to developing translational theranostics involving dynamic immune modulating materials. She received her B.S.E. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Daniel Mendoza
Daniel is interested in synthetic biology, specifically in molecular logic, designing small molecules to have predictable, repeatable, and orthogonal input-output relationships. He is focused on increasing system complexity, reducing leaky signals and crosstalk, designing dynamic materials with proteins and nucleic acids, and developing systems for applications in biosensing, environmental monitoring, drug delivery, and precise spatiotemporal control of gene expression. He has a UW College of Engineering Dean’s Fellowship and has a B.S. (Int.) in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from Yale University.

Riya Patel
Riya is interested in leveraging synthetic biology and metabolic engineering tools towards enabling more efficient bioproduction platforms for desirable compounds or therapeutic products. After graduating with a B.E. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Vanderbilt University, Riya spent three years working in Cell Culture Process Development at Gilead Sciences, where she developed and optimized mammalian cell culture biomanufacturing processes for therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs).

Tingli Qian
Tingli is interested in developing and applying computational tools for molecular design, to create therapeutic molecules for the treatment of diseases. She is also passionate about understanding biomolecular mechanisms through computational methods. As an undergraduate, she conducted research at the intersection of computational biology and pharmaceutical chemistry, working on multiple projects that employed data science approaches and computational modeling. She has a B.S. in Bioinformatics from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.

Shawn Ralyn
Shawn is interested in de novo enzyme design for applications in sustainable chemical bioproduction. Specifically, he aims to develop methods for the efficient generation of novel protein catalysts that can accelerate the transition to a sustainable bioeconomy and reduce the environmental impact of industrial chemical processes. He has a B.S. in Chemical Biology from UC Berkeley.

Tobias Rangel Guillen
Tobias is interested in lab automation, AI, and Machine learning. He aims to develop skills in automation using AI and Machine learning to make everyday lab activities more efficient. He wants to apply these skills in the development of clean energy technologies. Tobias has worked at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), developing next-generation battery electrolytes for lithium metal batteries, and contributed to the development of their self-driving MIRAL lab. He has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UW.

Kat Rincones
Kat is interested in applying synthetic and genetic engineering to immunology applications, such as T-cell therapies. She has worked on CAR-T cell engineering and high-throughput T-cell discovery and engineering. She has her B.S. in Bioengineering from Northeastern University.

Zach Seitz
Zach is interested in studying nucleic-acid and protein sequencing, single-molecule enzymology, and single-molecule thermodynamics using nanopore tweezers. As an undergraduate, he worked with DNA origami to develop novel methods for studying biomolecular interactions. He has a B.S. in Physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Elena Toups
Elena is interested in advancing the national energy landscape. Her work has spanned the development of materials for Li-ion batteries to data-driven approaches for improving battery maintenance in public transportation. She has also worked on novel heterogeneous catalysts for converting greenhouse gases into renewable fuels. She has her B.S. in Chemistry from the University of New Orleans and an M.S. in Chemical Engineering from UW.

Jordan Vanni
Jordan is interested in cellular signaling and tissue regeneration after injury, particularly in understanding how receptor responses may trigger the transcription of genes related to healing. As an undergraduate, Jordan worked as an REU student in Dr. Jennifer Robinson’s Lab, focusing on characterizing surface marker proteins that may have regenerative potential in the meniscus tissue. She is an NSF GRFP 2025 recipient and has a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry from Pacific Lutheran University.