David is a Bioengineering PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania in Dr. Carl June's Lab working on T cell engineering to enhance function in solid tumor settings. Previously, he completed undergraduate degrees in Bioengineering and Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley, where he worked on magnetic particle imaging and point-of-care diagnostics research, which he took through the NSF I-Corp program and UC LAUNCH accelerator as a startup called Clean Slate.

A San Francisco native, David enjoys outdoor adventures and trying new bakeries, and appreciates a good public transportation system. He currently focuses his free time on keeping up with new science and tech, rock climbing, and improving his pottery practice.

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GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT

Becoming the first person in my family to go to graduate school working toward becoming the first to obtain a PhD.

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MOST INFLUENTIAL CONTENT READ/LISTENED TO IN PAST YEAR

"Range" by David Epstein, which discusses how there is value in spending more time exploring as a generalist as opposed to becoming a specialist earlier. Broadened thinking and cross-domain experiences have characterized some of the most successful people in their trades, and become more advantageous in a society where some specializations can be delegated to machine intelligence.

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RECENT INNOVATION OR DISCOVERY THAT HAS HAD GREATEST IMPACT ON TECH/HEALTH

Computation-augmented design of therapeutic molecules both chemical and biomolecular. Advances in computational methods combined with increases in the amount and generation of high-quality data has uniquely enabled the development and testing of molecules unknown to our understanding of the natural world.