Meet the Team
Winter 2025
Xin Jin, Ph.D.
Freeman Hrabowski Scholar, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Associate Professor, Department of Neuroscience, Dorris Neuroscience Center, Scripps Research
Adjunct Professor, Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD
Xin received her B.Sc. in Chemistry from MIT and her Ph.D. in Biology from The Rockefeller University working in the Laboratory of Cori Bargmann. As a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, she worked with Feng Zhang, Paola Arlotta, and Aviv Regev to develop in vivo genetic screening technologies to study brain development. She is the recipient of the Pew Biomedical Scholar, McKnight Scholar Award, Sloan Research Fellowship, Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship, Early Career Award from the International Society of Autism Research, Peter Gruss Young Investigator Award from the Max Planck Society, and was named as one of the ‘35 Innovators Under 35’ by MIT Tech Review.
@xinjin.bsky | @xinjin | CV
-

Boli Wu
Mark Pearson Endowed Graduate Fellow
-

Xinhe Zheng
Frank J. Dixon Graduate Scholar
-

Jill Liu
Graduate Student
-

Cassie White
Schimmel Endowed Skaggs-Oxford Fellow
-

Alex Sun
Skaggs Endowed Graduate Fellow
-

Seoyeon Kim
Helen L. Dorris Graduate Fellow
-

Yifan Zhang
UCSD MSTP Graduate Student
-

Jiwen Li
CIRM Postdoctoral Fellow
-

Tuo Shi
CIRM Postdoctoral Fellow
-

Wenwen Zhang
Postdoctoral Fellow
-

Lavanya Vishvanath
Research Specialist - Neuroscience
-

Melodi Frey
Staff Scientist
-

Thoko Nyasulu
McKnight Pecot Fellow
-

Kyu Qiu
Research Technician
-

Iain Mendez
Research Technician
-

Michael Geralt
Lab Manager Extraordinaire
-

Ethan Badger
Lab Administrator Extraordinaire
-

Zephyra Zhao
UCSD Intern
-

Ritu Doshi
UCSD Intern
-

Pranay Dayal
UCSD Intern
-

Sophia Kim
UCSD Intern
-

Maddie Volfbeyn
UCSD Intern
Lab Alum, we miss you!
Ph.D. graduate
Research Technicians
Nhan Huynh 2024-26
Grace Clarke 2022-24
Graham Anderson 2021-24
Kristina Ivanov 2021-22
Baylor College of Medicine, Ph.D. Program
Scripps Research Institute, Ph.D. Program
UCSD, Graduate Program
NYU, Bioinformatics Program
Undergraduate & high school interns
Denise Romero 2026
Efe Balkanli 2026 Cech Fellow
Gloria Ye 2025-26
Alan Chau 2025-26
Amy Pan 2024-25
Sasha Patel 2025
Zoe Caldwell 2025
Allyna Huang 2025
Ankita Ghosh 2025
Hanyu Fang 2025
Qiucun She 2025
Siena Parr 2024
Philip Tsai 2024
Andrea Balcan 2024
Coco Keyi Yu 2023-24
Amber Selstad 2024
Chloe Samouhi 2024
Abdullah Ashiq 2021-24
Isha Desai 2021-24
Josh Park 2020-23
Catherine Kuo 2023
Anjali Srinivasan 2021-22
Rebecca Gin 2021
UC Irvine, undergrad
Duke University, undergrad
Northwestern University, Machine Learning and Data Science Graduate Program
UCSD undergrad
UCLA, School of Dentistry
UC Irvine graduate
Lehigh University, undergrad
UCSD undergrad
UCSD undergrad
UCSD undergrad
UCSD, Bioengineering Graduate Program
Dolores Secondary School | Future leader award (CBS News) → University of Puget Sound
UCSD, undergrad
UCSD, PATHS scholar
Stanford University, Bioengineering Graduate Program
UCSD graduate → GeneGoCell
Barnard College, undergrad
University of Colorado, School of Medicine
Creighton University, School of Medicine
Harvard University, Biological and Biomedical Sciences Ph.D. Program → OpenAI
UCSD graduate → LabCorp
UCSD, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Ph.D. Program
UCSD, BS/MS Program
Patrick Thompson 2022-26
Senior Scientist, Cellular Genomics, Pfizer