Principal Investigator
Peter J. Chung
Peter J. Chung is the Robert D. Beyer (‘81) Early Career Chair in the Natural Sciences and Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southern California, with courtesy appoints in Chemistry and Medical Biophysics.
He was previously a Kadanoff-Rice Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago studying proteins involved in Parkinson’s disease. He received his PhD in physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and undergraduate degrees in physics and materials engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Dr. Gabrielle Abraham
Dr. Gabrielle Abraham is a postdoctoral fellow examining the bulk materials properties of the self-coacervating protein, Synapsin-1. She received her PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara under the direction of Prof. Omar Saleh.
Dr. Regina Agulto
Dr. Regina Agulto is the Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow investigating the liquid-liquid phase separation properties and regulation of TDP-43, a protein implicated in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). She received her PhD from the University of California, Davis under the mentorship of Dr. Kassandra Ori-McKenney.
Graduate Students
Rashmi Gangwar
Rashmi Gangwar is a Physics PhD student at the University of Southern California. She completed her undergraduate studies in Physics at Baranas Hindu University, and earned a Master’s degree in Physics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
Ellie Kraichely
Ellie is a Chemistry PhD student at the University of Southern California. She earned her B.S. in Chemistry at the College of Charleston and previously worked in an Organic Chemistry laboratory under the direction of Timothy Barker.
Edward Lien
Edward Lien is a Medical Biophysics PhD student at the University of Southern California. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley and previously worked in the Gradinaru Lab at the California Institute of Technology.
Antonis Margaritakis
Antonis Margaritakis is a Physics PhD student at the University of Southern California. He earned his Bachelor’s of Science in Physics from the University of Crete and previously worked in the Quantum Physics and Quantum Biology Laboratory under the direction of Iannis Kominis.
Lesley Aguilar Salceda
Lesley Aguilar Salceda is a Chemistry PhD student at the University of Southern California. She earned her B.S. in Biochemistry at California State University, Channel Islands, and previously worked in a computational biology lab at the New York Genome Center under the direction of Rahul Satija. (edited)
Nicholas Scurato
Nicholas Scurato is a Physical Biology PhD student at the University of Southern California. He earned his Bachelor’s of Arts in Cell Biology and Neuroscience from Rutgers University, New Brunswick and previously worked for the Department of Defense through the Marine Corps, the Pentagon, and DARPA.
Dog
Maxwell Chung
Named after James Clerk Maxwell, his research interests include high-throughput validation and cataloging of olfactory signatures of every canine in Los Angeles.