Dynamic Nucleic Acid Systems lab

Elisa Franco, Professor

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Bioengineering, Molecular Biology Institute (2018-present)

2011-2018 UC Riverside, Assistant Professor

2012 Ph.D. Caltech; 2008 Ph.D. University of Trieste; 2002 Laurea Degree: Power systems engineering, University of Trieste.

Email: efranco at seas dot ucla dot edu

Office: Engineering 4, 38-137P

Positions: We are always looking for motivated UCLA undergraduate and graduate students with background in engineering, biology, biochemistry and chemistry.

Current lab members

Postdoctoral scholars / research scientists

Dr. Dino Osmanovic
Ph.D. University College London

Dr. Annie Tang,

Ph.D. Arizona State University

Dr. Daniela Sorrentino
Ph.D. University of Rome
Tor Vergata
AIRC fellow

Dr. Pavel Afrose
Ph.D. IISER Kolkata

Graduate students

Shiyi Li
Ph.D. Student
Bioengineering UCLA

Eiji Nakamura
Ph.D. Student
MAE UCLA

Heather Romero Mercieca
Ph.D. Student
Bioengineering UCLA

Mahdi Dizani
Ph.D. Student
MAE UCLA

Undergraduate students

Taneeka Anand, Biochemistry UCLA

Britney Castaneda Camacho, Bioengineering UCLA

Kevin Wang, Bioengineering UCLA

Brian Perlstein, Bioengineering UCLA

Diana McGrory, Bioengineering UCLA

Celina Yu, Bioengineering UCLA

Lab technician

Yuna Kim, Bioengineering UCLA

Alumni, with position after leaving our lab

Dr. Christian Cuba Samaniego,
Ph.D. ME UCR
Assistant professor at CMU (summer 2024)
Personal website

Dr. Siddharth Agarwal
Ph.D. Bioengineering UCLA
Associate at McKinsey & Co.

Dr. Leopold N. Green,
Ph.D. Bioengineering UCR
Assistant Professor
Biomedical Engineering, Purdue
Personal website

Dr. Vahid Mardanlou
Ph.D. ECE UCR
Amazon

Dr. Jaimie M. Stewart
Ph.D. Bioengineering UCR
Assistant Professor
Bioengineering, UCLA
Personal website

Hari K. K. Subramanian,
Chromacode

Dr. Xun Tang,
Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University
Personal website

Dr. Raffaele Baggi, Ph.D. ME UCR Lockheed Martin

Dr. Jenny Vi Le,

Ph.D. Ohio State University

Eric Payson, Bioengineering UCLA
Yucheng Sheng, M.S. student, UCLA MAE
Tonie Butler, M.S. student, UCLA MAE
Passa Pungchai, undergraduate student, UCLA BE -> Ph.D. student at Rice university
Judith Landau, undergraduate student, Cal State LA -> Ph.D. student at USC
Melissa A. Klocke, Ph.D. student and postdoctoral scholar
Kristen Froehlich, M.S. student, UCLA BE
Vivienne Gunadhi, M.S. student, UCLA BE
Sydelle Davis, undergraduate student, Howard University, Chemical Engineering
Saron Yoseph, undergraduate student, Howard University, Chemical Engineering
Aria Harris, undergraduate student, Howard University, Chemical Engineering
Katelyn Carleton, undergraduate student, UCLA MAE
Sonia Gomez, undergraduate student, UCR BIEN
Krishen Wadhwani, undergraduate and MS student, UCR BIEN
Kimia Yaghoubi, undergraduate student, UCR Neuroscience -> MS student, UCR Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Jonathan N. Lloyd, undergraduate and MS student, UCR BIEN -> CelGene, San Diego.
Claire H. Tran, undergraduate student, UCR BIEN -> Biomolecular Science Ph.D. program at UCSB.
John Reed, undergraduate and M.S. student, UCR ME -> Epic Systems Corporation.
Andrew Reimer, M.S. student, UCR BIEN -> Roche Molecular systems.
Stewart Contreras, M.S. student, UCR ME -> Systems engineer at Northrop Grumman.
Rex Lu, undergraduate student, UCR ME -> MAE M.S. program at UCLA.
Manuel Bedrossian, undergraduate student, UCR ME -> Research engineer at Caltech.
Danyia Ashhad, undergraduate and M.S. student, UCR BIEN.
Sho Kitada, undergraduate student, UCR Biochemistry.
Christopher Galley, undergraduate student, UCR Biology.

Former visitors

Martin Gobry, Ph.D. Student, iNano, Aarhus University, Denmark (2023)
Daniela Sorrentino, Ph.D. Student, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy (2021)
Chiara Favaretto, Ph.D. Student, University of Padua, Italy
Andrea Carron , M.S. student, University of Padua.
Maximilian Weitz, Ph.D. student, Technical University Munich.