Nastassia Parker (nastassiaparker96@gmail.com) is an undergraduate who is graduating in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Science in Cellular and Molecular Biology and a minor in Chemistry.  She performs various in-silico analyses to identify and validate genetic factors in the 5′ untranslated region that contribute to efficient protein biosynthesis.  She presented this project at the Southern California Branch of American Society for Microbiology (SCASM) collegiate conference and was selected as one of the winners of the Outstanding Research Award and invited to present her research at the annual ASM conference in June 2020.

In her spare time, she interns at Takeda Pharmaceuticals in the Biophysics department and her hobbies include painting, reading, cooking, and hanging with her cat, Dasha.