Hey there! I am third-year biophysics Ph.D. Candidate in the Possu Huang Lab at Stanford University. My research interests are in developing deep learning algorithms for the design of de novo functional proteins. At Stanford, I am a Teaching Assistant for BIOPHYS 241: Biological Macromolecules. I also currently serve as a program organizer for the 37th Machine Learning in Structural Biology Workshop at NeurIPS.

I graduated with a BS in Computer Science, BA in Biophysics, and BS in Applied Math and Statistics from Johns Hopkins University. At Hopkins, I was an undergraduate researcher with Doug Barrick and previously the-late James Taylor. I also worked in the Integrated Imaging Center as a cryo-EM research assistant under the supervision of Michael McCaffery. I spent a lot of my time at Hopkins as a Teaching Assistant for Introductory Physics (AS.171.107/108), Biophysical Chemistry (AS.250.372), and Protein Engineering & Biochemistry Lab (AS.250.253).

I was previously a process development intern at Shire Pharmaceuticals (now Takeda Pharmaceuticals) and a software development intern at Senscio Systems.

This year, I am a Graduate Teaching Asistant for BIOPHYS 242: Biological Macromolecules. When I'm not doing research, you can probably find me weightlifting, hiking, eating, or with friends!

Publications

An all-atom protein generative model
Alexander E. Chu, Lucy Cheng, Gina El Nesr, Minkai Xu, Po-Ssu Huang
bioRxiv '23 | bioRxiv
pdf| abstract| cite

Singular value decomposition of protein sequences as a method to visualize sequence and residue space
Autum R. Baxter-Koenigs*, Gina El Nesr*, Doug Barrick (* = Equal Contribution)
PS '22 | Protein Science
abstract| cite

Recorded Talks

Machine Learning for Protein Engineering
Talked about SVD for visualizing sequence and residue space.
Virtual Talk
video| abstract

Selected Awards

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
2022 | Stanford University

Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science (IDIES) Student Summer Research Fellowship
2020 | Johns Hopkins University

Jason H.P. and Beverly Kravitt Fund Fellow
2019 | Johns Hopkins University

Woodrow Wilson Research Fellowship
2018 | Johns Hopkins University

Academic Service

Workshop Reviewer
2024 | GEM.bio @ ICLR

Program Workshop Reviewer
2024 | ICLR

Workshop Organizer + Reviewer
2023-Present | MLSB @ NeurIPS