Leen Arnaout is a 5th year PhD candidate in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Graduate Program in Bioengineering. She is doing her thesis in Dr Marina Sirota's lab at UCSF, using public data and bioinformatics tools to discover how changes in the microbiome's structure during pregnancy are associated with birth outcomes. She is one of two inaugural Berkeley Discovery-NASA Space Biosciences graduate fellows developing a research program to introduce undergraduate students to bioinformatics and machine learning for space biology and creating tools to allow the scientific community to easily analyze NASA's publicly-available data. Beyond academia, Leen enjoys cross-stitch, film photography, trying new coffeeshops with friends, and taking full advantage of the student rush tickets at the San Francisco Symphony.
Rishal Misra
Rishal Misra is a Master’s student in Chemical Engineering with a focus on Drug Development. He is one of two fellows on the NASA Space Biosciences project, working at the intersection of machine learning and space biology. His research background spans several areas of the life sciences, including molecular biology, chemical biology, and analytical chemistry. As an undergraduate, his research focused on protein misfolding during post-translational modifications. Outside of research, he enjoys skiing, surfing, playing soccer, and exploring new food spots.
