Welcome Brian Nguyen!

Brian Nguyen started this week at NCIRE, as a Research Assistant III, and will be primarily working with Drs. Alex Smith and Sei Lee on several of their clinical research studies related to improving health outcomes in older adults.  Brian has a Bachelor’s Degree from UC Berkeley in Molecular and Cell Biology (with an emphasis in Immunology), and History.  Most recently, Brian worked as a Lab Technician at the Exploratorium Living Systems Laboratory, where he cultivated amoeba, rotifer and D. Melanogaster using a variety of cultures and media, and repaired and maintained over 100 exhibits with mechanical, electronic and living components.  Also not so new to UCSF, Brian was a Research Specialist at the Mark Ansel Laboratory between 2017 and 2018 and a Research Assistant for the Raul Andino Laboratory between 2014 and 2015.  I won’t go into too much details, but Brian has a lot of “bench research” experience extracting mouse blood samples and genotypes.  But wait, there’s more!  Brian was also a Volunteer Physician Observer/Helper at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center between 2017 and 2019, where he gained a lot of direct patient care/research experience by assisting physicians on physical exams, scribing and designing medical record forms, as well as abstracting and reporting medical data.  Last, but certainly not least, Brian was an Art Therapy Intern for the UCSF Medical Center (now UCSF Health) in 2014, where he performed violin at patients’ bedside with a culturally-diverse and sensitive patient population.  Brian will be stationed at the VA (Building 1, Room 220) and shadowing Annette in the coming days.  He can be reached at [email protected], phone # TBD.  If you get a chance to meet Brian, please make him feel welcome to our ever-expanding (and very impressive) team!

From: Drs. Alex Smith and Sei Lee, Annette Rodriguez, and Karen