My research interests are in anti-aging interventions and discovering the drivers of aging to find potential therapeutic targets. My current understanding of aging is that it is an evolved programmed process within our cells to prevent our population from decreasing too quickly if there is insufficient food to support the entire population. One of the hypothesized drivers of aging is our epigenome, which includes the methylation patterns of our DNA and the methylation and acetylation patterns in our histones. I am interested in finding any patterns in our epigenome that drives the aging process.

I currently work as a research assistant in Dr. Donghui Zhu’s laboratory. I am investigating the effects of antioxidants on a particular protein in microglia in Alzheimer’s disease. These antioxidants tend to decrease with age so it may be useful to know how these antioxidants act on our bodies.