Two CMCF center fellows, Trini Nguyen and Remy Vu, have received 2020 Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) award from the National Science Foundation. The NSF’s GRFP recognizes and supports individuals early in their graduate training in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Trini and Remy are two of the 29 awardees from UCI who will receive three years of funding support.

Trini Nguyen is a Ph.D. student in the Mathematical, Computational, and Systems Biology graduate program. Supervised by Jun Allard, she is working on a number of projects as part of the Mathematics Core. One of the projects focuses on the cell signaling reactions occurring near the cell membrane. In this project, Trini is investigating the effects the crowding of tethered enzymes have on signaling reactions. Another project Trini is working on is funded by the 2019-20 CMCF Interdisciplinary Opportunity Award (IOA), in which she collaborates with a graduate student from the Andersen Lab (School of Medicine) to investigate the load tolerance advantages volar skin has over non-volar skin.

Remy Vu is a PhD student in the Department of Biological Chemistry in Dr. Xing Dai lab. She utilizes single-cell RNA sequencing data to study molecular changes and interactions in different cell types during cutaneous wound healing (Theme A).