Throughout my career, my specialized research has focused on virology and infectious disease research. In 2015, I received my PhD in virology from the University of Tokyo, Japan, where I studied molecular mechanisms of replication of Herpes Simplex Virus 1. Following my PhD, I started my post-doctoral training under Dr. Sean P.J. Whelan's mentorship and then worked as a staff scientist. In 2021, I got promoted to an instructor position, and then in 2023, research assistant professor in the lab. In the past 10 years, I have studied vesicular stomatitis virus platform for development of countermeasures against emerging enveloped viruses. The experience gained in the field has been recently and successfully translated in dissecting host factors for cell entry and assembly of SARS-CoV-2 and the immune response against SARS-CoV-2 in COVID-19 patients. In the past 4 years or so, I have worked with colleagues in humoral immune response after COVID-19 vaccination and/or infection and definition of neutralizing antibody epitope and characterization of immune escape and developing broadly cross-reactive monoclonal antibody against variants of concern (VOCs). These joint efforts led to several publications in prestigious journals such as Cell Host & Microbe (Liu et al., 2021) Nature (Kim et al., 2022; Alsoussi et al., 2023) and Immunity (Schmitz et al., 2021; VanBlargan et al., 2021). Overall, I have co-authored 38 peer-reviewed publications during my scientific career.

My current research interest focus on these three field: 1) Identification of novel viral and host regulators for viral infection; 2) Definition of neutralizing antibody epitope and identification of SARS-CoV-2 spike mutations; 3) vaccine and antiviral countermeasures development. 

Regarding my mentoring statement, I would like to share my own mentor experience during my scientific career. As a graduate student studying virology in Japan, I participated in “Love Lab” held by the University of Tokyo for middle-school students from underprivileged backgrounds. This included teaching some basic scientific experiments and enhancing their curiosity about viruses and disease. I also joined the Foreign Student Union in Tokyo, where I was able to talk to students from different countries with under-represented racial minorities and encourage them to pursue their scientific research. As a postdoc and then research scientist in the USA, I have had the privilege to mentor an undergraduate student from Puerto Rico. I not only taught him about scientific research but also foster his interest in science, and help him with graduate school applications. I also worked closely with a collaborator, who was working as a technician and dreaming to go to graduate school. I engaged him into my research project, shared my own experiences in graduate school, and served as a letter writer for his graduate school applications. After two-year’s in the laboratory, he succeeded in his application for graduate school at New York University where he is currently a bioinformatic student with hopes to bridge the link between large clinical sequence data and efforts to advance therapies. I also mentored a graduate student from the middle east, teaching her about research and sharing with her my own experience as an immigrant scientist, encouraging her to pursue what she dreams. She published a first author paper in Nature this year that demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 Omicron boosting can induce de novo B cell response in humans and further supported the necessity to boost our current mRNA vaccines.

In addition to mentoring undergraduate students and graduate students in practical areas of teaching in experimental science including experimental design, execution, and data analysis, I seek to empower them by educating them about opportunities to advance their careers, such as applying for fellowships and attending scientific meetings. I am committed, and work constantly to promote diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in all aspects of my career. I am also deeply interested in helping undergraduate/graduate students. I believe that excellence in science is demands a diverse and inclusive community where differing lived experiences and viewpoints only serve to enhance creativity. In addition to all of this, it is a great deal more fun and interesting to be around people different from you.