Undergraduate Cohort Ready for “BIG” Summer of Genomics Research at UCLA

Twenty-seven undergraduates will participate in a summer program developed to address the need for scholars from diverse backgrounds in dental, oral, and craniofacial research.

June 20, 2023

Beginning Tuesday, June 20, a cohort of 27 undergraduate scientists from around the country will conduct eight weeks of graduate-level genomics research in UCLA School of Dentistry laboratories, as well as those in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

This marks the third summer of Bruins in Genomics: Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial (BIG DOC) Research Training Program. Developed to address the need for researchers and practitioners in this field from diverse backgrounds with strong data science skills, the initiative was funded by a $1.6 million R25 grant from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, a division of the National Institutes of Health, in January 2021.

Students from racial and ethnic groups underrepresented in biomedical research, those with disabilities, and those from disadvantaged backgrounds are among the scholars beginning their training remotely this week; most participants will move into UCLA residence halls on June 26.

Dr. David Wong, principal investigator of the R25 grant, serves as BIG DOC’s program director while Dr. Karolina Kaczor-Urbanowicz, an adjunct assistant professor serves as BIG DOC program coordinator.

“These exceptionally talented undergrads will gain skills in Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) and other computational data science analyses relevant to dental, oral, and craniofacial research through a series of dedicated didactic and hands-on workshop tutorials,” said Dr. Kaczor-Urbanowicz, whose personal research focuses on salivary RNA sequencing, bioinformatics, and biomarker development for many oral and systematic diseases including cancer.

“We expect that for many of our participants, this research experience will serve as a launching point for their research training and career development. There is currently a shortage of oral health researchers with data science skills, and we anticipate the need for skilled practitioners will increase over the next decade as more and more data is generated.”

The BIG DOC initiative is part of a multidisciplinary Bruins in Genomics Summer (BIG Summer) program chaired by Dr. Alexander Hoffmann and coordinated by UCLA’sInstitute for Quantitative and Computational Biosciences. Campus-wide, 49 scholars were selected from more than 420 applicants.

Within the UCLA School of Dentistry, students will work in pairs and have both a faculty mentor and a direct research mentor, typically a postdoctoral fellow or graduate researcher. The five faculty members currently using NGS methods who will open their laboratories this summer are Dr. Jimmy Hu, Dr. Honghu Liu, Dr. Alireza Moshavarinia, Dr. Hung Ton-That, and the aforementioned Dr. Wong; visit each of their lab pages to learn more about specific research focuses.

The cohort’s summer of discovery is punctuated by the BIG DOC symposium on July 19 followed by research poster presentations and an awards ceremony on Aug. 11.

Alumni of BIG DOC speak highly of the program, while two members of the inaugural 2021 cohort will be matriculating to combined D.D.S./Ph.D. programs at Harvard and UC San Francisco, focusing on computational genomics, this fall.

“BIG DOC is one of the most unique programs in the world. It not only allowed me to take graduate-level bioinformatics courses taught by top researchers but also to take my computational and mathematical skills and apply them to real-world data,” said Tim Lindsey, a 2022 participant and recent graduate of Biola University. “The research done at UCLA and the BIG program is cutting edge, and it was a great experience to be a part of a truly new frontier in the scientific world.” 

The 2023 BIG DOC Cohort is comprised of:

	Name	Undergraduate Institution	UCLA Faculty Mentor	Direct Research Mentor
	Hamza Ahmed	University of Virginia	Aaron Meyer*	Jackson Chin
	Jackson Bentley	California State University, Los Angeles	Harold Pimentel*	Albert Xue
	Brooke Bowman	University of Missouri	Leonid Kruglyak*	Joshua Bloom
	JC Daniel Calso	UCLA	Jimmy Hu	Leah Ye
	Sophia Choi	Vassar College	Hung Ton-That	Dana Franklin and Yi-Wei Chen
	Lisa Duncan	Los Angeles Valley College	Michael Wells*	Alexander Dai
	Jacqueline Durney	Brigham Young University	Aaron Meyer*	Jackson Chin
	James Evans	Middle Tennessee State University	Paul Boutros*	Zhuyu Qiu and Jee Han
	Radha Ganesh	San Jose State University	Nandita Garud*	Ricky Wolff and Michael Wasney
	Gilbert Herrera	UCLA	Robert Prins*	Lu Sun
	Amaan Jogia-Sattar	UC Berkeley	Paul Boutros*	Zhuyu Qiu and Jee Han
	Anuradha Krishnan	Pomona College	Sriram Sankararanam*	Ulzee An
	Chase McGill	Cornell University	David Wong	Karolina Kaczor- Urbanowicz and Irene Choi
	Kaylene Morrison	Columbia University	Honghu Liu	Ha Luong and Jie Zhang
	Siddharth Naidu	Duke University	Jason Ernst*	Runjia (Luke) Li
	Diane Nguyen	UC Riverside	Hung Ton-That	Dana Franklin and Yi-Wei Chen
	Vanshika Rajparia	Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani - Hyderabad Campus	Honghu Liu	Ha Luong
	Noe Reyna	University of Texas at Austin	Paul Boutros*	Roni Haas and Nicholas Wang
	Jessica Sandoval	California State University, Northridge	Michael Wells*	Alexander Dai
	Alyssa Stainton	University of Massachusetts, Amherst	Leonid Kruglyak*	Joshua Bloom
	Ryan Thien	University of Arizona	Alireza Moshavarinia	Weihao Yuan
	Nico Matthew Valencia	University of Guam	Jennifer Wilson*	no direct mentor
	Juan Vergara Najar	UCLA	Eric Deeds*	no direct mentor
	Yuchen (Amy) Wang	Williams College	Jimmy Hu	Leah Ye
	Mordecai Wesenachin	UCLA	Jimmy Hu	Leah Ye
	Alice Yu	University of Central Florida	David Wong	Karolina Kaczor- Urbanowicz and Irene Choi
	Sunny Yu	Rice University	Alireza Moshavarinia	Weihao Yuan

* Indicates faculty colleagues in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA