Goodbyes and Welcomes

At the end of June we said farewell to two long-time researchers in the Rocklin Lab. Radhika Dalal finished her time as a Rosetta Commons Post-baccalaureate Scholar and is now preparing to start her Ph.D. research at UCSF's Biophysics program! We are so excited for her! Unfortunately Radhika could only work remotely for her entire time with us, but we will miss her. Good luck at UCSF Radhika!!

Jonathan Chen also graduated from the lab after completing his Master of Science in Biotechnology degree. Congratulations Jonathan! Jonathan is moving on to a position at Kite Pharma and might be considering a Ph.D. in protein design in the future! Jonathan leaves behind tens of thousands of designed proteins that we have not yet experimentally tested, but we expect to have these results soon :). Jonathan will really be missed - in addition to being a great colleague he was also a mentor for many summer and rotation students in the lab.

Along with sad goodbyes, we are also excited to welcome many new lab members! We are so thrilled that lab founder Claire Phoumyvong (Research Technician March 2019-Aug 2020) has decided to re-join the lab as a DGP Ph.D. student!!

We are also excited to welcome two scholars supported by Rosetta Commons: Will Howe (Rosetta Commons Summer Intern) and Andres Lira (Rosetta Commons post-baccalaureate fellow). Matthew Jin has also joined the lab as a Northwestern Synthetic Biology Summer REU student!

Finally, Kyrollos Shenouda joined the lab for his Northwestern Master of Science in Biotechnology research. Welcome Kyrollos!

With so many new people we are all being kept busy, but it has certainly made the lab lively!

Also: congratulations to Cydney Martell for passing her qualifying exam!