UW MolE 2026 PhD cohort

Nicole Alizade

She/Her/Hers

Nicole’s research focuses on engineering light-responsive protein systems that direct de novo DNA synthesis within living cells, combining generative design with optogenetic control to develop programmable nanopore variants that overcome the scale, complexity and environmental limitations of current technologies. Nicole earned a B.S. in Life Sciences and an M.Sc. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Sorbonne University. She received a University of Washington College of Engineering Dean’s Fellowship.

Justin Blacher

He/Him/His

Justin is interested in protein design and synthetic genomics to design and manipulate cells, particularly for applications in synthetic biology, biocomputing and astrobiology. As an undergraduate, he conducted astrobiology research in human space health and plant computational genomics — as well as projects in cell biology, analyzing the cell cycles of cnidaria and biotech stem cell separation methods. He earned a B.S. in Biology from the University of Florida.

Katelyn Campbell

She/Her/Hers

Katelyn is interested in developing and applying tools for both translational impact and understanding biological systems. She worked as a researcher in the Bhardwaj lab at the Institute for Protein Design developing and improving computational methods for cyclic peptide design. Katelyn earned a B.S. in Biochemistry and a B.A. in Music from the University of Washington.

Pruthviraj Chavan

He/Him/His

Pruthviraj is particularly interested in using de novo protein design to engineer immunogens and functional proteins that can elicit robust and precisely directed immune responses against pathogens and cancer — along with engineering self-assembling protein nanostructures as programmable platforms for the targeted delivery of therapeutic molecules, and developing personalized medicines and exploring the emerging field of de novo genome design. Pruthviraj earned a B.Sc. in Agriculture from Mahatma Phule Agricultural University and a M.Sc. Biotechnology from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal.

Alejandro Chaves-Martínez

He/Him/His

Alejandro is interested in integrating computational modeling and protein design to increase our understanding of immune systems and develop novel immunotherapies. As an undergraduate, he studied the evolution of the outer membrane in diderm bacteria at the Institut Pasteur in France. As a postbac at University of California, San Francisco, he developed next-generation chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies for solid tumors in the Roybal Lab. Alejandro earned a B.S. in Biotechnology Engineering from the Costa Rica Institute of Technology.

Liangyu Chen

He/Him/His

Liangyu is particularly interested in engineering dynamic hydrogels and protein-based biomaterials, as well as using single-cell approaches to investigate rare bacterial subpopulations and their roles in biofilm behavior. As an undergraduate, he studied emerging technologies for diabetes treatment, including glucose biosensors, continuous glucose monitoring, and insulin delivery systems. During his graduate studies, he investigated how septal inhibitory circuits regulate alcohol reward and the effects of liraglutide. Liangyu earned a B.S. in Biological Sciences from University of California, Davis, and an M.S.E. in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

August Dolmatch

He/Him/His

August is interested in applying protein design to the development of low-cost, environmentally-sustainable catalysts and therapeutics. His first exposure to research was through a project in enzymology, where he studied the reaction mechanism of a thiyl radical enzyme under Prof. Brandon Greene. Later, he transitioned to a project in protein engineering where he initiated the design of a virus-like particle vaccine scaffold under Prof. Carolyn Mills. August earned a B.S. in chemistry from University of California, Santa Barbara. He is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow.

JiaJia (Dawning JiaXi) Fu

She/Her/Hers

JiaJia is a graduate student in Baker Lab and passionate about applying computational enzyme design and synthetic biology to tackling sustainability problems. Her undergraduate work spanned HIV glycan shield molecular dynamics, de novo metamorphic protein design and microbial engineering for plastics biorecycling. JiaJia earned a B.S. in Bioengineering from Northeastern University. She is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and received a University of Washington College of Engineering Dean’s Fellowship.

Pari (Paridhi) Latawa

She/Her/Hers

Paridhi’s masters thesis focused on DNA LLMs for human genome discovery. Her research explored evolutionary diversity of protein through computational mining at the Feng Zhang Lab at the Broad Institute. She worked on AI/ML for molecular design at Langer/Traverso Lab at the Koch Institute. Paridhi previously interned at Eli Lilly, MD Anderson and Danish biotech startup. Pari earned an M.Eng. in Computer Science and Molecular Biology, and a B.S. in Computer Science and Molecular Biology with a Minor in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a NSF Graduate Research Fellow.

Jared Noel

He/Him/His

Jared is interested in developing predictive models of biomolecular systems at multiple scales to understand how complex biological behaviors emerge. As an undergraduate at the University of Arkansas, he advanced a myocardial signaling network model by incorporating graph neural network components to predict patient-specific fibrotic responses to drug perturbations in William Richardson’s lab. Jared earned a B.S.Ch.E in Chemical Engineering and a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Arkansas. He is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow.

Jimena Perez Tetuan

She/Her/Hers

Jimena’s research interests lie in immunoengineering and synthetic biology. During her undergraduate studies, she utilized molecular dynamics simulations to evaluate liposome mechanical properties and cellular uptake for drug delivery. She is also an alum of the Fred Hutchinson Summer Undergraduate Research Program, where she studied HER2+ breast cancer recurrence in the Dr. James Alvarez Lab. Jimena earned a B.S. in Bioengineering from Northeastern University. She received a University of Washington College of Engineering Dean’s Fellowship.

Waverly Wilson

She/Her/Hers

Waverly is excited to be conducting environmental conservation research with a synthetic biology and chemistry focus. As an undergraduate, she was a member of Dr. Parisa Hosseinzadeh’s Lab pursuing research on the computational design of protein pathway inhibitors to understand a protein pathway during a disease state. Waverly earned a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Oregon.

Brenda Wu

She/Her/Hers

Brenda is interested in using computational protein design towards developing enzymes to enable challenging chemical reactions. Her background is largely in synthetic organic chemistry, leveraging transition metal catalysis to mediate enantioselective carbon-carbon bond forming reactions. Brenda earned a B.S. in Chemistry from California Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Chemistry from Stanford University.

Ethan (Yi-Ju) Wu

He/Him/His

Ethan’s research interests lie in supramolecular chemistry and organic materials. He’s passionate about using molecular-level design to create functional materials with precisely controlled properties. Under Professor Sheng-Hsien Chiu’s guidance, his research focused on designing new supramolecular systems based on mechanically interlocked molecules and molecular self-assembly using dynamic covalent chemistry. Ethan earned an M.S. in Chemistry from National Taiwan University and a B.S. in Chemistry from National Taiwan Normal University.

Thea Zalunardo

She/Her/Hers

Thea’s research interests lie at the intersection of protein structure, molecular mechanism and therapeutic design. She is particularly interested in understanding how molecular structure governs protein function. She comes from professional work in both academic and biotech settings in San Diego. She investigated antibody effector functions for viruses such as HIV and Malaria at Scripps Research Institute. Following this, she worked at Valora Therapeutics on cancer-targeting antibody chimeric therapeutics, contributing to the Protein Engineering team. Thea earned a B.S. in Chemistry/Biochemistry from University of California, Santa Barbara.