Current Lab Members

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Dr. Jerold Chun, MD, PhD

Jerold Chun, MD, PhD, is a Distinguished Scholar at Neurocrine Biosciences in San Diego and a Professor at Sanford Burnham Prebys (SBP) Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, CA.  He received his MD and PhD (Neuroscience) degrees through the Medical Scientist Training Program at the Stanford University School of Medicine, completed postdoctoral studies as a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow at the Whitehead Institute–MIT, and has held Professorships at the UCSD School of Medicine, The Scripps Research Institute and SBP where he was also Senior Vice President for Neuroscience Drug Discovery.  He has also served as Department Head of Molecular Neuroscience at Merck Research Laboratories and has interacted with the biotech and pharmaceutical industry over the last 25 years.  His research has made important contributions to our understanding of the brain, including the discovery of genomic mosaicism and somatic gene recombination and its involvement in the most common forms of Alzheimer’s disease, with relevance to other brain diseases; and in separate work, he identified the first lysophospholipid receptor and other members of this lipid receptor family that underlie multiple medicines (e.g., fingolimod, siponimod, ozanimod, ponesimod and etrasimod).  He has further contributed to an understanding of other diseases, including hydrocephalus, schizophrenia, neuropathic pain, infertility and fibrosis.  Dr. Chun has been recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher since 2014.

DR. Yasuyuki Kihara, PhD

Yasu developed strong interests in the fields of Lipids, GPCRs and Neuroimmunology at the University of Tokyo, where he received his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. In 2010, Yasu washed up on San Diego shores and has pursued a career as surfer life scientist and has remained a prominent member of the Chun Lab. He recently edited the book Druggable Lipid Signaling Pathways that reviews historical achievements in lipid research, as well as new perspectives on drug discovery.

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DR. Deron R. Herr, PhD

Deron began his scientific journey in San Diego, earning his Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology at the SDSU/UCSD joint doctoral program. His dissertation work on lipid metabolism led him to a postdoc at The Scripps Research Institute where he studied receptor-mediated lipid signaling. He then moved to the National University of Singapore in 2011 to continue this work in his own lab, but with a focus on early-stage drug discovery. Deron leaned into this translational aspect by spending two years running the biology program for a start-up therapeutics company focused on the development of PROTAC-like protein degraders. Now, he is happy to be back in San Diego, not only for the fantastic science, but also so he can go trail running and snowboarding again.

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Danielle Jones, Research Administrative Specialist

Danielle grew up in Silicon Valley where she began working on computers during high school. This early experience with word processors ultimately led to a career as an administrative professional. Following graduation from UC Berkeley with a BA in English, she moved to Arlington, VA, and joined her first non-profit company, Green Thumb, Inc. (now known as Experience Works) that trained and employed low-income seniors mostly in rural America. She returned to California and worked at the RAND Corporation in the Health Program for Dr. Katherine Kahn. While at RAND, she became an expert on grant submissions to entities of the National Institutes of Health and the Health Care Financing Administration (now known as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services). A move to San Diego brought her to the Chun lab at The Scripps Research Institute and then to SBP. When not managing the administrative aspects of the lab, she enjoys gardening, nature photography, and reading.

Dr. Valerie (Val) Tan, PhD, Research Specialist

Valerie was born in Penang, Malaysia, and grew up in Singapore. She attended college in the U.S. and received her PhD from the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program at UCSD in 1999. Valerie joined the Chun Lab at SBP as a Research Specialist in June 2018. She studies the role of lysophosphatidylcholine in inducing hydrocephalus in mice, and is involved in various projects studying genomic mosaicism in the brain. Outside of the lab, Valerie enjoys spending time with her three children and playing tennis.

Dr. Laura WOLSZON, PhD, Scientific Associate

Laura has a PhD in Biophysics and focused her research career on the neurophysiology and development of the brain. She worked 5 years in technology transfer as a senior licensing office at UCSD, then joined UCSD’s Calit2, where she built interdisciplinary and interinstitutional strategic partnerships and research programs before joining the Chun Lab.

Clayton Ellington, Research Associate I

Clayton grew up in Egypt and Zambia before returning to his home state of California for his undergraduate studies. Unable to let go of math, physics, chemistry, or biology, he decided to combine them all for a BS in Bioengineering at Stanford. During his time there and as a Fulbright grantee and masters student at Institut Pasteur and Universite de Paris, he built microfluidic and imaging tools that give mosquito scientists new ways to investigate mosquito DNA and biting behavior. In the Chun Lab, Clayton continues to integrate optics, microfluidics, and biochemistry to study the interactions of ligands with proteins that are important to neurodegenerative diseases. On the weekends, you can find him skiing up and down mountains or participating in a good old-fashioned footrace.

Dr. Rob Linder, PhD, Bioinformatics Scientist

Rob is a bioinformatics scientist with experience assembling custom NGS pipelines and analyzing large, complex genomics datasets. He’s also a cat person with 2 cats, Frankie and Hoppy, and an avid ping pong enthusiast! 

Dr. Tony Ngo, PhD

Tony was born and raised in Sydney, Australia, where he received his PhD in Pharmacology from the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and the University of New South Wales. In his research career, so far, he has been at the interface of pharmacology and computational biology, using both in silico and in vitro techniques to understand the structure and function of clinically-relevant GPCRs, particularly orphan and protein-binding receptors. He is currently exploring new molecular mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease progression and identifying suitable drug targets for treating neurodegenerative disease. He is eco-friendly and enjoys spending time with friends and family, hiking, and live music.

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Christine Liu, PhD

Christine graduated from UC Berkeley in 2016 and joined the Chun Lab in the summer of 2017 for her graduate studies as part of UC San Diego’s Biomedical Sciences Propgram. After graduation in Fall 2022, she transitioned to a post-doc position. Her projects in the lab focus on bioinformatic tool development for characterizing mosaic genomic features in both short-read and long-read sequencing experiments. Christine was recently recognized by the 2022 NIH Outstanding Scholar in Neuroscience Award Program (OSNAP) for her graduate work in neuroscience and genomics.

Juliet Nicodemus

Juliet is an MD/PhD student in the lab. She grew up in San Diego, just down the road from SBP, before moving to Boston to attend college at Harvard University. While there, she conducted her thesis on blood-brain-barrier dysfunction in Adrenoleukodystrophy and earned a BA in Neuroscience. Her passion for neurology, neuroscience, and sunshine led her back to San Diego, where she joined the Medical Scientist Training Program at UCSD School of Medicine in 2016. She is currently studying the role of retrotransposons in Alzheimer’s disease.

Anis Shahnaee, PharmD, MPH

Anis was born in Tabriz and raised in Tehran, Iran. She received her PharmD degree from Tabriz University of Medical Sciences and worked on biopharmacy and drug delivery systems for her PharmD thesis. She joined Dr. Chun’s lab to continue her studies in neurodegenerative and demyelinating disorders, especially Multiple Sclerosis. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her husband, watching movies, and exploring amazing San Diego.

Maria Cavarlez

Maria received her BS in Biochemistry from UC San Diego in 2017 and worked in neighboring biopharmaceutical companies for several years before returning to academia. Maria joined the Chun Lab in 2022 and is primarily interested in characterizing extracellular vesicles and their impact on Alzheimer's Disease. In her free time Maria enjoys cooking, hiking, and working out.