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Jan Mikhale C

- Research Program Mentor

PhD candidate at University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley)

Expertise

Molecular and Cell Biology, Biomedical Sciences, Tissue Organization, Cancer Biology, Basic Cell Biology, Microbiology, Streptococcus, Lactobacillus, Microbiome research

Bio

I am currently finishing my first year as a Ph.D student at UC Berkeley's Molecular and Cell Biology program interested in, how tissues and organs maintain themselves to not become cancerous. Previously, I was a Master's student at San Francisco State University, where I studied how receptors on the surface of liver cells regulate our metabolism, and also studied Streptococcus as an undergraduate at the same institution. I have mentored undergraduates and master's students in the lab, but also have a passion for mentoring students interested in getting involved with research! I've met one-on-one with mentees to help place them in research labs, write grad school applications, and to better understand the grad school landscape in the U.S. Outside the lab, I enjoy hanging out with friends at local coffee/boba shops, watching and critiquing anime with my partner, going on hikes around the beautiful Bay Area, bouldering, biking (casually), and being lazy with my bright-orange rescue cat Georgie. I am also a huge fan of the SF Giants baseball team, and the Warriors basketball team, who I will always root for no matter where they rank in the standings.

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

How do cells know who their neighbors are?

Organs are made up of tissues, and tissues are made up of cells - the building blocks of our body that grow, divide, and perform many complicated tasks to keep our bodies going. Of course, cells have to maintain their structure and integrity, but to do so, they need to know who is next to them. Cells that do not know the context of their environment may not function correctly, or worse, will continue to divide and grow and form a tumor. In this project, I will guide you in reading and understanding the current literature in tissue biology to understand cell-cell interactions and eventually write an essay that summarizes what is known, what is unknown, and create a recommendation for which direction the field should move towards. You will learn how to write a scientific review-style paper in a way that is accessible to an early-career researcher, how to read scientific papers, how to synthesize knowledge from an interdisciplinary field. Tissue biology combines many aspects of basic biology, so this project will also help you find what subfields of biomedical sciences you might be curious about. Outcomes are flexible depending on student interests, so we can tailor this to your specific goals!

How can we better detect cancer before it starts?

A major issue in cancer healthcare is that cancers are often detected once it is a highly advanced disease that requires highly aggressive and invasive treatments. Many lives can be saved by early cancer detection, but this feat is easier said than done. What is the current knowledge on early cancer detection, and what work is being done to improve it? In this project, you will read current literature to gain a broad understanding of cancer detection methods, and find one that you are most interested in. You can then suggest methods to further characterize the efficacy of this method in laboratory experiments, or develop animal models to study its limits of detection. Students will learn experimental planning, how to read scientific papers and reviews, and gain insight on efforts to bridge the gap between bench research and clinical applications.

Coding skills

R

Languages I know

Tagalog, intermediate

Teaching experience

Aside from my experience mentoring undergraduates and other grad students in lab, I have mentored undergraduate students in my institution and internationally via one-on-one virtual mentorship sessions to help students obtain research experience, get into a research lab, brainstorm career ideas, and suggest classes to take. In the classroom, I have served as a peer assistant, where I attended class lectures and meet with the instructor once a week to suggest changes to ensure the class is accessible and equitable for a diverse student body.

Credentials

Work experience

San Francisco State University, Lily Chen Lab (2018 - 2020)
Undergraduate Research Fellow
San Francisco State University, Erica L Sanchez Lab (2020 - 2022)
Graduate Research Fellow
UC Berkeley, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology (2022 - Current)
Graduate Student Researcher

Education

California State University, San Francisco (CSU San Francisco)
BS Bachelor of Science (2020)
Biology, concentration in Microbiology
California State University, San Francisco (CSU San Francisco)
MS Master of Science candidate
Molecular and Cell Biology
University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley)
PhD Doctor of Philosophy candidate
Molecular and Cell Biology

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