Former doctoral student Dr. Jaimie Stewart joins the UCLA core bioengineering faculty. While at UCR, Jaimie studied under BIG faculty member Professor Elisa Franco (now at UCLA) where she focused on the design and synthesis of RNA nanostructures. After graduating, she joined Professor Paul W. K. Rothemund’s Laboratory at Caltech as a postdoctoral fellow. Her appointment at UCLA began July, 2023.

Dr. Stewart has already received numerous awards recognizing her research accomplishments including becoming an ISFS Fellow (The Intersections Science Fellows Symposium (2021), a Next Generation Faculty Fellow (2021), being featured in Highlighting the African American Scientist, Gladstone Institutes, (2021), receiving an LSRF Fellowship sponsored by Merck Research Laboratories (2020), selected as one of the 100 Inspiring Black Scientists in America, Cell Mentor (2020), receiving a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, NASEM (2019),  and the KNI Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship, Caltech (2019).

Dr. Stewart joins several of our other alumni who have chosen to join the academy including Dr. Marlon S. Thomas (Fisk University), Dr. Srigokul Upadhyayula (Berkeley), Dr. Leopold N. Green (Purdue University), Dr. Chris Kieslich (Auburn University) and Dr. Devin McBride (University of Texas Health Science Center Houston).