• Undergraduate Molecular and Cell Biology student at University of California, Berkeley

• Joined Riley Research Group in June 2024

• Email: vrt (at) berkeley.edu 

I grew up in Sunnyvale, a suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. My interest in science began when I was gifted a book featuring a cartoonish DNA molecule that “narrated” how cells work. Growing up, I greatly enjoyed reading mystery books, and loved learning how chemical biologists acted as molecular detectives to probe and investigate biomarkers of cancer and cardiac disease. My early college education started around the time when large datasets and compute resources became widely available, which led me to train as a computer scientist with an emphasis in machine learning. With the Riley Research Group, I’m excited to begin my journey as a basic science researcher in glycoproteomics and contribute to computational projects involving the analyses of glycopeptides. Outside of the lab, I play a musical instrument known as the harmonium and my favorite activity is going to petting zoos!