DLRG welcomes three new MS/PhD students from Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) who will lead projects in synthetic glycobiology
Yufan Qin (pictured at left) is a first-year PhD student in CBE at Cornell. She will be working on understanding and optimizing polysaccharide conjugation to carrier proteins with a goal of creating robust cell-free platforms for glycoconjugate vaccine expression. Prior to coming to Cornell, Yufan earned a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from UC-Irvine in 2020. A year later, she earned an M.S. degree also in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan.
Phuong (Amy) Nguyen (pictured at left) is a first-year PhD student in CBE at Cornell. She will be working on the design and engineering of multivalent vaccine candidates against diarrheal disease-causing pathogens with the goal of creating cell-based and cell-free systems for low-cost, on-demand biosynthesis of broadly protective antimicrobial vaccine formulations. To tackle this problem, she will leverage state-of-the-art methods in cell-free protein synthesis and synthetic glycobiology. Amy completed her B.S. in Chemical Engineering at Drexel University.
Helene Walker (pictured at left) is a first-year MS student in CBE at Cornell. She will be working on an immunoengineering project focused on the discovery of glycan-specific binding proteins from combinatorial libraries with a goal of identifying new antibody and non-antibody protein scaffolds with high-affinity and specificity for important carbohydrate antigens. Helene earned her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of New Mexico in 2022.