Member News

  • May 16 – Congratulations to the following MS research students of the Ray Laboratory on their graduation:

    • Ayesha Mukhtar
    • Rashid Alam
    • Ani Aghekyan
    • Ida Soh
    • Mehak Khattra
    • Charles Koli.

    April 22 – Congratulations to the following PhD students of the Ray Laboratory on their successful completion of all requirements of their PhD degree:

    • Jonathan Felix (Thesis title: Experimental Mapping of the ACE2-Binding Fitness Landscape in the SARS-CoV-2 Receptor-Binding Domain).
    • Zhihao Zhang (Thesis title: Computational Discovery and Generative Design of Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies).

  • May 17 – Congratulations to the following MS research students of the Ray Laboratory on their graduation:

    • Christopher Perucho
    • Kaitlyn Murphy
    • Ravneet Gill
    • Jaylan Brown

    May 17 – Peace Olatoyinbo (PhD student in the Ray Laboratory) was selected as the 2025–2026 Trainee Liaison to the American Association of Immunologists (AAI). She was recognized for her research on SARS-CoV-2 spike protein variant-modified epitopes.

    May 3-7 – Dr. Karen Paco (Postdoctoral Researcher), Peace Olatoyinbo (PhD student) and Sanaz Zebardast (PhD student) presented posters at the American Association of Immunologists Annual Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii.

  • December – Dr. Karen Paco (Postdoctoral research in the Ray Laboratory) made an oral presentation at NeurIPS 2024 (Vancouver, BC, Canada) describing her work with colleagues Mariana Paco, Zihao Zhang, Isabel Condori, Sanaz Zebardast, Peace Olatoyinbo, Dhruv Patel, Jonathan Felix, Tristan Yang, Jordan Lay, Ilya Tolstorukov, Karine Le Roch, Matthew Sazinsky, Jeniffer Hernandez, Stefano Lonardi, and Animesh Ray. Her talk was entitled: “ASPred: Identification of Antigen Specific B-cell receptors from single V(D)J sequences using Large Language Models”.

    December – Congratulations to the following PhD student for successfully completing all requirements for his PhD degree:

    Tristan Yang (Thesis title: A Guessing Game: Inferring the Environmental Impact of Fungi from their Genomic Signatures). [Tristan was supported by Loam Bio, Inc.]

    September 26-27 – Karen Paco (Postdoctoral Researcher, Ray Laboratory) presented keynote addresses at the NSF-funded RAGSAB Workshop (Rapidly Addressing Gaps and Solutions in AI Education for Bioprocessing and Smart Manufacturing in Biotech) in Los Angeles. Mariana Paco (undergraduate student intern at Ray Laboratory) also contributed an oral presentation at the workshop.

    External industry-funded PhD student Cole Link joins Ray Laboratory community as a PhD student (co-advisor: Dr. Luke Burman), funded and supported by aTyr Pharma, Inc. (La Jolla).

    May 18 – Congratulations to the following MS research students of the Ray Laboratory on their graduation:

    • Princess Mae Valois
    • Ramzi Tweini
    • Ashwin West
    • Demetri Gonzalez
    • Erick Torres

    March 24-27 – Ray Laboratory researchers Purnima Singh, Peace Olatoyinbo (PhD student), Galil Cohen and Princess Mae Valois (MS student) presented a poster at Pichia 2024 conference in San Diego.

    March 17 – Podium presentation by PhD Student Jonathan Felix at the Gordon Conference on Biotherapeutics and Vaccine Development (Advancing Research and Development of Next Generation Technologies Addressing Global Access of Biotherapeutics and Vaccines March 16 – 17, 2024). Title of his talk: Mapping the Impact of Neutralizing Antibodies on Viral Evolution Using Fitness Landscapes.

  • June – Congratulations to Timothy Chai on his acceptance to medical school.

    May  – Congratulations to the following members of the Ray Laboratory on their graduation:

    • MS students Sidhant Idgunji, Ayna Rejepova, and Eric Georgian
    • MBS student Daniel Ramos Sono
    • MEng students Isabel Condori Roman and Purnima Singh