LATEST NEWS

• 03/2022; I'm very excited to announce that I will be joining the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Indiana University School of Medicine as a tenure-track Assistant Professor beginning September 01, 2022!

• 03/2022: Our paper entitled "Directed evolution of Methanomethylophilus alvus pyrrolysyl-tRNA synthetase generates a hyperactive and highly selective variant" was just published in Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences! doi.org/10.3389/fmolb.2022.850613 [LINK]

• 09/2021: I am honored to have been awarded an NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Indpendence Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences! 

• 05/2021: I will be giving a talk entitled "Protein engineering by genetic code expansion" at the Janelia Early Career Research Symposium on Protein Engineering. Register for the symposium here.

• 04/2021: I will be giving a talk entitled "Genetic encoding of three distinct noncanonical amino acids" at the Spring 2021 American Chemical Society Meeting. Register to attend the conference here.

• 03/2021: Our paper entitled "Genetic encoding of three distinct noncanonical amino acis using reprogrammed initiator and nonsense codons" was just published in ACS Chemical Biology! DOI: doi.org/10.1021/acschembio.1c00120 [LINK]

• 01/2021: I will be giving a talk entitled "Genetic code expansion" at the 2021 Alliance for Diversity in Science and Engineering Young Researchers Conference. Register to attend the conference here.

• 12/2020: Our paper entitled "Genetic encoding of three distinct noncanonical amino acids using reprogrammed initiator and nonsense codons" is live on bioRXiv! DOI: 10.1101/2020.12.07.415521 [LINK].

• 06/2020: Our book chapter entitled "Engineering Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetases for use in Synthetic Biology" was just published in "The Enzymes", DOI: 10.1016/bs.enz.2020.06.004 [LINK].

• 03/2020: My thesis work was published in Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15057-7  [LINK].

• 02/2020: Our review on the use of initiator tRNAs in synthetic biology was just accepted by ChemBioChem [LINK] The review was selected as a Very Important Paper (VIP).

• 01/2020: I will be attending the tRNA conference [LINK] in Columbus, Ohio (May 31-June 04). Hope to see you there!

• 01/2020: My thesis work was accepted for publication by Nature Communications, [LINK].

• 12/2019: Our article entitled Initiation of Protein Synthesis with Non-Canonical Amino Acids In Vivo was accepted for publication by Angewandte Chemie! Check out the paper [LINK]. 

• 01/2019: I joined the research team at the Center for Genetically Encoded Material (C-GEM), an NSF-funded center with the goal of repurposing translational machinery to produce functional materials. Check out more about C-GEM's mission [LINK].

• 06/2018: I was selected by the Department of Chemistry as the 2018 recipient of the Jim and Marie H. Galloway '29 Scholarship. The scholarship is awarded annually for excellence in chemical research.

• 05/2018: I have accepted a Postdoctoral Research Associate appointment in the laboratory of Professor Dieter Söll at Yale University.                        I am scheduled to begin work in the Söll lab July 2018. [LINK]. 

• 05/2018: I was proud to be one of over 10,000 Aggies to receive their degrees from Texas A&M today! Gig 'em Aggies!

• 02/2018: My Ph.D. thesis entitled 'Expanding the Chemical Diversity of Phage-Displayed Peptide Libraries' has been approved! [LINK]