Meet the Inaugural Double Helix (GIDH) Fellow, Krizia Chambers

Krizia Chambers, UCSC PhD student

The UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute Double Helix (GIDH) Fellowship, a merit-based fellowship newly established in 2021, has been awarded to Krizia Chambers, a PhD candidate in the Program in Biomedical Sciences and Engineering (BMEB Track). 

The GIDH is awarded to outstanding first-year UCSC graduate students who are committed to genomics research and who will contribute to enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in genomics research. Candidates are selected from applicants to the UCSC Graduate Program in Biomedical Sciences and Engineering, which includes four interdisciplinary training tracks (Biomolecular Engineering & Bioinformatics; Chemical Biology, Biochemistry & Biophysics; Microbial Biology & Pathogenesis; and Molecular, Cell & Developmental Biology). 

Krizia Chambers earned a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Eckerd College and a Master of Science degree in Molecular Medicine from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Chambers’s research focuses on developing computational tools to model cancer evolution in effort to profile and characterize the tumor microenvironment. During her master’s degree, Chambers specialized in immune-oncology and pediatric oncology. The core of her master’s thesis investigated the functional impact of differing costimulatory domains in chimeric antigen receptor T-cells (CAR-T-cells) with respect to on-target tumor eradication.

“What I look forward to the most is working in a highly collaborative environment which spurses discussion about cancer evolution,” Chambers said. “I am highly interested in Dr. Brooks’s work annotating alternative splicing events from RNA-Seq data,” Chambers elaborated, referring to UC Santa Cruz Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Angela Brooks. Brooks serves as Faculty Director, Diversity, UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute. 

Prior to her start at UCSC, Chambers was an ORISE Fellow within the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) at the FDA working with single-cell sequencing data, where her research goal was to uncover the molecular mechanisms behind adverse drug reactions.

When she is not science-ing, Chambers can often be found outdoors playing tennis, swimming or hitting the slopes on her snowboard, and she is currently learning to play the calypso.

The GIDH award money came from Genomics Institute discretionary funds and is intended to supplement the student’s offer package for costs such as fees and tuition. 

For more information about the GIDH, please contact Angela Brooks, anbrooks@ucsc.edu, 831-502-7275.

Last modified: Aug 16, 2024