Mathematical modeling study of hospitalization and vaccination during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic underscores the importance of precise prediction models to forecast disease patterns, which can help inform effective prevention strategies. In this study, I develop two models considering hospitalization and vaccination. The vaccination model’s predictions closely aligned with post-vaccine release data. This suggests its potential use in forecasting for other vector-borne diseases and vaccine impacts. I presented this work at the Mini-Workshop for Mathematical Modeling of Malaria held at the Minnesota State University in September, 2023.

This work was mentored by Prof. Ruijun Zhao and supported by NSF.

The role of secondary metabolites in the composition of root microbiome of Arabidopsis

In the summer of 2023, I performed a full-time research internship in the lab of Prof. Seth Rakoff-Nahoum at Boston Children’s Hospital. I worked closely with postdoc fellow Dr. Gabriel Lozano Betancourt on two research projects. One project focuses on devising metagenomic sequencing methods to study the microbiome composition in mutant Arabidopsis defective in specialized triterpene biosynthesis in the roots (see my research presentation). The other project addresses the role of glycogen metabolism in host adaptation of anaerobic human gut bacteria, Bacteroides.

This work was mentored by Dr. Gabriel Lozano Betancourt and Prof. Seth Rakoff–Nahoum.

Scientific illustration for Nature Chemical Biology review article on plant metabolism

This review article discusses the current knowledge of plant specialized metabolism, particularly in addressing our understanding of the biological functions and higher-level adaptive mechanisms of those specialized metabolites in plants. Working with the authors, I illustrated Figures 2, 3, and 4 for this paper. My contribution is acknowledged in the Acknowledgment section of the paper. Click the front page to view the full paper.

This work was mentored by Prof. Jing-Ke Weng.