PhD in Life Sciences
Previously at NIH
Recent projects
2026
AI prototyping
Verifying the end-to-end workflow with an
AI-assisted prototype
Creating an interactive React prototype to connect dashboard and data table with realistic data
2025
Data viz
Unifying the dashboard experience for scientific researchers
Merging two disconnected dashboards and integrating real-time table results
2024
Data organization
Optimizing a complex genomic data table for data analysis
Resolving workflow bottlenecks to provide scientists with structured filtering and effortless data downloads
2023
User research
Guiding researchers to critical genomic data through a homepage redesign
Leveraged insights from 200+ participants to remove navigation barriers and accelerate time to data discovery
My story
I joined NCBI as a scientist and witnessed researchers struggling with tools built without input from the people meant to use them.
This led me to advocate for user research and pursue formal education in UX and visual design. Now, after 6 years of designing for scientists, I combine my virology background with design knowledge to improve virus research tools.
Product designer
End-to-end design process
Complex data visualization
Public sector & research tools
User research advocacy
Cross-functional collaboration with scientists
6 years
Product leadership
Balancing business, users, and feasibility
Prioritizing in Agile workflows
Stakeholder management in public sector
Technical constraint navigation
Incremental delivery strategy
6 years
Life Sciences
Virology & molecular biology
Plant & fungal ecology
Scientific method & systematic thinking
Complex data analysis
Research methodology
PhD
My work experience
2020 - 2026: Product Designer at NCBI
Led user research and usability Testing with 500+ scientlists, resulted in 3 major redesigns
Created 300+ wireframes/prototypes, resulted in 50+ feature improvements
Content desgin: created and maintained 2 help documentation centers
2018-2020: SME and Data Curator at NCBI
Content management and curation of database for virus-related resources
Wireframing and prototyping, resulted in NCBI Virus MVP design
Created 100+ different visualizations of virus-related data
2010 - 2018: Staff Scientist at Computercraft
Communication management and community outreach
Hand-coded (CSS and HTML) landing and help documentation pages for 4 virus-related resources
Co-author of 7 scientific publications about virus-related resources
2007-2009: Postdoctoral Fellow at UCSF
Identify and characterize novel human and animal viruses
First author of 3 scientific publications and co-author of 2 scientific publications
My work
All my work focused on the NCBI Virus resource, used by researchers worldwide to search, view and download viral sequences.
Viruses shown to scale:
First row: Rabies virus, Influenza virus, HIV, Coronavirus.
Second row: Tobacco mosaic virus, Adenovirus, T7 bacteriophage, Papillomavirus, Zika virus.
The snaking virus on the right is Ebola virus.
NCBI Virus resource provides millions of sequences and associated data for these and other viruses, freely available to everyone.