Current Students | UC Davis School of Medicine

Alma Mater: Columbia University in the City of New York, B.A., History
Matriculation Year: 2025
Current Stage: MS1

Alma Mater: University of California, Davis, B.S., Cognitive Science and Cell Biology
Matriculation Year: 2025
Current Stage: MS1

Alma Mater: University of Iowa, B.S., Ethics and Public Policy; B.A., Global Health Studies
Matriculation Year: 2025
Current Stage: MS1

About Allex
Allex enjoys gardening, hiking, and spending time with their two cats, Mocha and Beso. Their background includes work in free clinics, medical-legal partnerships, and community-based research, where they have supported underserved patients and collaborated with local partners to address health inequities.

Research Interests
Community-based participatory research and applied epidemiology to advance health equity in perinatal, reproductive, and gender-affirming care, harm reduction, rural, and Indigenous and circumpolar communities.

View Allex’s publications on ORCID

Alma Mater: University of California, Los Angeles, B.S., Neuroscience
Matriculation Year: 2025
Current Stage: MS1

Matriculation Year: 2024
Current Stage: MS2

Matriculation Year: 2024
Current Stage: MS2

Alma Mater: UC Berkeley, B.A. in Molecular Biology; Harvard University, M.S. in Media, Medicine and Health
Matriculation Year: 2024
Current Stage: MS2

About Katarina
Growing up in the North Bay Area, Katarina was shaped by family in engineering, ecology, and community organizing, and by loved ones navigating complex medical conditions. These experiences sparked her interest in the intersection of transportation, technology, and human health. Her research uses mixed methods to examine transportation’s impacts on health, society, and the environment.

Research Interests
Injury research and prevention, social epidemiology, automative medicine, blunt force trauma and emergency medical services

Matriculation Year: 2024
Current Stage: MS2

Alma Mater: UC Berkeley; B.A. Molecular and Cell Biology
Matriculation Year: 2024
Current Stage: MS2
Graduate Group: NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program

About Moira
Moira grew up in Davis and began her UC Davis research journey in high school, working across multiple labs studying neuroinflammation, developmental biology, pulmonary disease models, and gene therapy. Her work spans MS, Wnt signaling, asthma, and post-hemorrhagic hydrocephalus. She enjoys spending time with family and dogs, traveling, and creative pursuits.

Research Interests: Molecular mechanisms and therapeutic interventions in autoimmunity and development

View Moira’s publications on the NIH National Library of Medicine site

Alma Mater:  Johns Hopkins University B.S. Neuroscience, MHS Immunology
Matriculation Year: 2024
Current Stage: MS2

About Mike
Mike’s background is in psychopharmacology, psychoneuroimmunology, clinical trial design, and drug intellectual property. Experiences working with underserved populations, including servicemembers, people with substance use disorders, and BIPOC communities, shaped his focus on gaps in care. He emphasizes humility in medicine and openness to diverse approaches to healing.

Research Interests
Mike’s research focuses on improving psychiatric practice through basic, computational, epidemiologic, RCT, and humanistic approaches, challenging siloed models of mental health care.

Alma Mater: 
Matriculation Year: 2023
Current Stage: GS1

About Briana
Briana is originally from Los Angeles and completed her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at Cornell University in upstate New York. She enjoys spending her free time playing tennis with friends, hiking with her dogs, and traveling.

Research Interests
Her research interests include community nutrition and the gut microbiome. 

Alma Mater: UC Los Angeles, B.S. in Molecular, Cell, Developmental Biology
Matriculation Year: 2023
Current Stage: GS1
Graduate Group: Biochemistry, Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology

About Ann
Ann studies how stem cells develop in regenerative medicine and cancer. During her undergraduate years at UCLA, she researched stem cell differentiation in bone marrow with John Adams, M.D. at the Orthopaedic Hospital Research Center. After that, she spent two years in the lab of Arnold Chin, M.D., Ph.D. at the David Geffen School of Medicine studying how the immune system interacts with bladder cancer patients. Outside of research, she enjoys making music, playing violin, and drawing new fashions.

Research Interests: Stem cells, cancer, immunology, cancer stem cells, bioinformatics, RNA-seq and scRNA-seq 

View Ann’s publications on ORCID

Alma Mater: University of California, Davis - B.S. Biomedical Engineering
Matriculation Year: 2023
Current Stage: GS1
Graduate Group: Biomedical Engineering
Ph.D. Mentor: Blaine Christiansen

About Joe
Joe enjoys sports, cooking for his partner, and hiking with his dog.

Research Interests: Joint mechanics, musculoskeletal health, osteoporosis, health equity

View Joseph’s publications on ORCID

Matriculation Year: 2023
Current Stage: MS3

Alma Mater: Columbia University, Neuroscience and Behavior B.A.
Matriculation Year: 2023
Current Stage: GS1
Graduate Group: Neuroscience

About Nick
Nick is originally from San Jose and majored in Neuroscience at Columbia University before coming to UC Davis. He enjoys spending time with fellow M.D./Ph.D. students and exploring the outdoors in the greater Sacramento area.

Research Interests: Learning and memory, psychiatric disorders

View Nick’s publications on ORCID

Alma Mater: 
Matriculation Year:  2022
Current Stage: GS2

About Wahed
Wahed is an MD/PhD student in the Immunology graduate group. Before starting medical school, he completed his B.S. At UC Davis where he worked as an undergraduate researcher studying beta cell populations with Dr. Mark Huising. Afterwards, he spent two years as a junior specialist studying B cell responses to influenza infection with Dr. Nicole Baumgarth. As a graduate student, Wahed is studying the effects of diet, adiposity, and obesity on anti-tumor immune responses and inflammatory syndromes with Dr. William Murphy.

Research Interests
Cancer immunology, immunology

Alma Mater: Johns Hopkins University, B.S. Neuroscience, Peabody Conservatory, B.M. Saxophone, University of Pennsylvania, Master’s, Computer Science  
Matriculation Year:  2022
Current Stage: GS2
Graduate Group: Biomedical Engineering
Ph.D. Mentor: Jie Zheng

About JoMo
JoMo is originally from San Jose, California. While pursuing studies in neuroscience and saxophone at Johns Hopkins and Peabody Conservatory, he became interested in sensory and perceptual information processing. This led him to research in auditory neuroscience and cochlear implantation. These experiences, along with familial encounters with neurodegenerative disease, have nurtured his interests to provide for patients afflicted by neurological disorders and disability.

Research Interests: Neuroengineering, Functional and Cognitive Restoration, Electrophysiology

View JoMo’s publications on Google Scholar

Alma Mater: UC Berkeley, B.S. Bioengineering
Matriculation Year: 2022
Current Stage: GS2
Graduate Group: Biomedical Engineering
Ph.D. Mentor: Nam Tran

About Nikita
Nikita graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a Bachelor of Science in Bioengineering and a minor in Computer Science. During undergraduate studies, Nikita conducted research with mentors at both the UC Berkeley and the UC Davis. Outside of academics, Nikita enjoys spending time outdoors, watching sports, and being with family and friends.

Research Interests: Point-of-care diagnostics

Matriculation Year:  2022
Current Stage: GS2

Alma Mater: University of Michigan
Matriculation Year: 2021 
Current Stage: GS3
Graduate Group: Neuroscience
Ph.D. Mentor: David Olson

Alma Mater: University of California, Berkeley, B.A.
Matriculation Year: 2021
Current Stage: GS3
Graduate Group: Molecular, Cellular and Integrative Physiology
Ph.D. Mentor: Kyle Fink

About Ankita
Ankita is an M.D./Ph.D. student in the Molecular, Cellular and Integrative Physiology graduate group. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Molecular and Cell Biology from the UC Berkeley, where she developed an interest in CRISPR-Cas genome engineering for therapeutic development and biological discovery. Before starting her dual-degree training, she worked at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard on functional genomic screening using CRISPR tools.

In her free time, Ankita enjoys watching sports, playing and listening to music, watching movies, baking, and spending time with her cat Mochi.

Research Interests
Ankita is interested in advancing CRISPR-Cas9 therapeutics and developing safe, effective delivery methods for targeting the brain.

Alma Mater: 
Matriculation Year: 2021
Current Stage: GS3

About Jessica
Formerly an MD candidate at UCDSOM, Jessica spent a gap research year at the NIH, where her experience in the Neuroimmunology Clinic drove her to pursue a PhD to understand Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy, a rare neuroinfectious disease. Her PhD is at both the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge and at the Experimental Immunotherapeutics Unit at NINDS. At UCDSOM, she was heavily involved with the Paul Hom Student Run Clinic, particularly the Neurology Specialty Clinic, which she formally established. On sunny days, she enjoys swimming or playing tennis. On rainy days, she enjoys embroidery with a TV show in the background. On both types of days, she enjoys napping.

Research Interests
Neuroinfectious diseases, neurodegeneration, neurodevelopmental disorders

Alma Mater: University of California, San Diego - B.S. Biochemistry/Chemistry
Matriculation Year: 2021
Current Stage: GS3
Graduate Group: Immunology
Ph.D. Mentor: Thomas Ambrosi

About Kelly
Kelly completed undergraduate studies at the University of California, San Diego, where she competed as a sprinter on the NCAA Division II track and field team. After graduation, she spent three years in the Dorrestein Lab at the UC San Diego conducting untargeted metabolomics research across multiple fields. She has a strong interest in orthopedics and musculoskeletal health.

After four years in Sacramento, Kelly has become an avid outdoor enthusiast and tries to make three trips to Yosemite each year. She enjoys running, hiking, camping, and spending time with her Australian Shepherd, Oliver.

Research Interests: Orthopedics, skeletal stem cells, microbiome

Kelly studies how age-related changes in the gut microbiome influence bone health, stem cell function, skeletogenesis, and blood cell development.

View Kelly’s bibliography on the NIH National Library of Medicine site  

Alma Mater: 
Matriculation Year: 2020
Current Stage: GS4
Graduate Group:
PhD Mentor: 

Alma Mater: 
Matriculation Year: 2020 
Current Stage: GS4
Graduate Group:
PhD Mentor: 

Alma Mater: University of California, Berkeley
Matriculation Year: 2019
Current Stage: MS3
Graduate Group: Neuroscience
PhD Mentor: Karen Moxon

Alma Mater: University of California, Davis
Matriculation Year: 2019
Current Stage: MS4
Graduate Group: Biochemistry, Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
PhD Mentor: Mark Huising