Hello there! My name is Coco :D Growing up in Guangzhou, China, I loved exploring everything the bustling city had to offer (including, memorably, an indoor water park inside a mall?!), I found myself increasingly drawn to science. That curiosity naturally led me to join Dr. Dorota Skowronska-Krawczyk’s lab during high school, where I studied the localization of PKA subunits in retinal pigment epithelial cells and experienced what working at the bench was like for the first time.
At UCLA, I continued exploring biology from a structural perspective in Dr. Juli Feigon’s lab, studying RNA-binding dynamics in the 7SK RNP and characterizing telomere shelterin complex using NMR and electron microscopy. As I dug deeper into protein structures, I became more interested in how these molecules behave within the larger cellular context. This interest brought me to the Taylor/Obara labs at UCSD, where I can combine my interests in structural and cellular biology.
When I’m not at the lab, you can usually find me trying new restaurants, sampling perfume at Nordstrom, dancing to K-pop songs, or chewing on a snack.