About

I'm a PhD candidate at UC San Diego, based at the Salk Institute, building deep learning models to predict how rare and noncoding variants perturb gene regulation in specific immune cell types. I train and benchmark sequence-to-function models and combine them with allele-specific evidence to estimate cell-type-specific variant effects, with a focus on type 1 diabetes and autoimmune disease.

Focus

• Variant-aware sequence-to-function modeling of chromatin and gene regulation
• Benchmarking and scaling genomic foundation models for variant effect prediction
• Single-cell variant effects (scATAC-seq / scRNA-seq)
• Allele-specific inference and bias correction (ASE; allele-specific chromatin accessibility; WASP2)

Journey

I took a nontraditional route into science: I dropped out twice, worked construction and restaurant jobs, and spent two years abroad before restarting at community college. Research clicked for me through field ecology, and that momentum took me from Cal State San Marcos to UC San Diego for my PhD. That path left me with a bias toward clarity, rigor, and doing things the hard way when it matters. More →

Outside the lab

I stay active with yoga, tennis, and boxing. Zazen practice keeps me grounded: cognition is fragile, confidence is cheap, and rigor matters.

I run a 60-member Discord tennis community (2–3 USTA teams/season), with automated scheduling and availability tracking.

Awards & Honors

Selected Work