Featured Alumni

Our Program Alumni

Our Master’s Program was established in 1992 with the mission of providing intensive hands-on training in research by requiring students to conduct focused research in a laboratory over a two-year period and to defend a written thesis. This training was to be complemented by rigorous coursework, thus allowing students to graduate with a strong theoretical and experimental research foundation in Cancer Biology and Molecular Biology. Students with undergraduate degrees from many different countries including the United States, China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Finland and Switzerland have enrolled in the program. More than 90% of students graduate with an MS degree in 2 years. Over 200 students have graduated from the program and are now pursuing diverse careers, including positions as staff in research and development, technical support or sales divisions within the pharmaceutical or biotechnology industries, faculty members in a university or research institute, research associates in academic research laboratories, physicians, pharmacists, patent attorneys, and technical writers. Many program graduates have also used their education and opportunity to co-author original research in publications as a stepping stone towards successful admission to PhD degree programs in the life sciences at USC or other highly ranked universities including Caltech, Cornell University, University of Oxford, University of California-Berkeley, University of California-Los Angeles, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Utah, and University of Minnesota, to name a few.

Lijun Yao (MS 2017)

Lijun obtained her BS in Horticulture from Hebei Agricultural University in Baoding, China (2015). Lijun’s incentive to enroll in the MS program was to allow her to change fields from horticulture to biomedical sciences. Her long term goal is to be a Professor at a top University in China. She conducted her thesis research in the lab of Dr. Peggy Farnham and got an introduction to bioinformatics, an area that she is keen on further pursuing during her PhD education. “The course curriculum at USC allowed me to develop a strong foundation in biochemistry, human genetics, molecular biology and biostatistics. My favorite course was the Toolbox course where we learnt principles of traditional and state-of-the-art methods used in biochemistry and molecular biology,” said Lijun. She was accepted to the PhD programs at USC, UCSC, Stony Brook University, University of Wisconsin, University of Vermont and Washington University in St. Louis. Lijun will enroll in the Human Statistical Genetics graduate program at Washington University in 2017.

Sean Chung (MS 2016)

Sean graduated with a BA in Neuroscience from Pomona College (2012). His undergraduate thesis project at Pomona allowed him to explore the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity and transmission. Although Sean was accepted to a PhD program, he chose to pursue a Master’s degree at USC because of its reputation and to identify areas of interest. His thesis research was done in the lab of a structural biochemist, Dr. Ralf Langen.

“I truly appreciate the depth of exposure and training I received from Prof. Langen and his lab because they will challenge me to examine protein structure differently, always keeping in mind its functional potential,” said Sean. Upon graduation, he secured

admission to PhD programs at UCLA and Cornell, and decided to enroll in the Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology Program at Cornell. In addition to his drive for science, Sean is a talented musician and played the viola as a Fellow with the American Youth Symphony. He is among the select group of 100 musicians chosen because they represent extraordinary talent from all over the world.

Yuhan Sun (MS 2016)

Yuhan graduated with a BS in Biological Science from China Agricultural University in Beijing, China (2014). Her long term goal was to obtain a PhD in the US and secure a position as a Professor in China. Her favorite feature of the program was the ability to conduct research over the entire two-year period which allows one to actually address a research question while acquiring expertise in various experimental methods. She completed her thesis research in the lab of developmental biologist, Dr. Ruchi Bajpai where she worked on a zebra fish model that allowed her to learn embryology, microinjection, gene editing with CRISPR-Cas9 and confocal microscopy, and co-authored a publication. “My mentor, Dr. Bajpai’s passion for research creates an exciting environment in the lab and inspired me to produce meaningful results,” said Yuhan. She was admitted to the Craniofacial Molecular Biology PhD program at USC in 2016 and is continuing her thesis research in the Bajpai lab.

Silvia Cervantes Cortés (MS 2015)

Silvia obtained her BS in Biochemistry from California State University in Long Beach in 2012. She was drawn to the Master’s program at USC because of its reputation. It also allowed her to determine if pursuing a PhD would be the right choice for her. She opted to do her thesis research in the lab of Dr. Ansgar Siemer. “Taking classes and working in the lab alongside PhD students and interacting with students from diverse backgrounds were great confidence-building experiences. In addition, Dr. Siemer was a great mentor who not only gave me an opportunity to actually use methods like PCR, cloning and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) that I had only known theoretically, but also encouraged me to pursue a PhD and taught me how to publish my results,” she said. With a long term goal of directing creative bench research in an academic or industrial setting, Silvia is currently pursuing a PhD in the Siemer lab.

Lijing Yao (PhD 2015)

Lijing obtained her BS in Biotechnology from Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangdong, China (2011). After she enrolled in the MS program, her interest in genomics drew her to the lab of Dr. Peggy Farnham under whose mentorship she ultimately obtained her PhD. “I really valued the mentorship of Dr. Tokes, Dr. Farnham and Dr. Berman during my time at USC. I also took advantage of the many seminars from speakers at various top Universities that allowed me to learn about cutting-edge research in molecular biology,” said Lijing. With programming skills in R and Perl, and statistics, acquired at USC as well as nine co-authored publications, Lijing found employment as a bioinformatician initially at Roche and later at Bina Technologies, part of Roche sequencing solutions, in the Bay area.