Graduate Student
Leo was born in the US and raised in China. Leo went to Carleton College and earned his undergraduate degree in Chemistry and minored in biochemistry as well as neuroscience. At Carleton, Leo worked with Dr. Joe Chihade on Alanyl-tRNA synthetases. Specifically, Leo worked on developing a continuous-spectrophotometric assay to monitor the synthetases' enzymatic activity. Upon graduation, Leo joined the Yang & Schimmel lab at Scripps research as a research assistant. He worked alongside with Dr. Ingrid Vallee on investigating the pathogenic mechanism of a R534* mutation in human cytoplasmic Asparaginyl-tRNA synthetases. During his rotation in the Morstein lab, Leo will focus on studying the molecular pathology of neutral lipids.