RNA Featured Researcher — Monika Franco, Program in Chemical Biology

 

Monika Franco
Ph.D. Candidate
Program in Chemical Biology
Koutmou Lab

 

 

  • What are your research interests? My thesis work is centered around investigating mRNA modifications and how they impact protein translation.

  • Who/what brought you to science? People. People brought me to science. My friends, my family, my professors. It was the idea that through science we could make changes that positively affected my life and others.

  • What do you hope is the outcome/impact of your research? I think basic science is always necessary. We need the foundational work to help us understand these mechanisms. I hope that my mRNA modification work can be used to help the mRNA therapeutics world.

  • What advice would you give to students who’d like to get more involved in research? Reach out to labs you are interested in. Talk to faculty as soon as you can. Getting in a lab during my undergraduate career was the best thing I ever did.

  • What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? So, that is a funny question. I am actually defending in June and going off to start my new job as a policy analyst. I will be working at a non-profit helping to make science policy recommendations to congress.

 

April 2022

Similar Posts

$1.6 million NIH grant brings new LUMICKS C-TrapⓇ “supermachine” to SMART Center core, combining optical tweezers with STED fluorescence microscopy

$1.6 million NIH grant brings new LUMICKS C-TrapⓇ “supermachine” to SMART Center core, combining optical tweezers with STED fluorescence microscopy

BY PAUL AVEDISIAN   The Single Molecule Analysis in Real-Time (SMART) Center, one of two shared-use core facilities of the Center for RNA Biomedicine at the University of Michigan, has been awarded a $1.6 million instrument grant from the National Institutes of Health for a LUMICKS C-TrapⓇ optical tweezers machine with super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, marking a…

|

Machine learning expands single-molecule analysis accuracy and accessibility

The observation of single biomolecules in real-time is crucial for our understanding of the cellular biology that is assembled from these molecules, be they DNA, RNA or protein. The recent development of an array of tools and techniques for single-molecule analysis allows studies at an extremely small scale (nanometers, or 10-9 meters) over short periods…

Yan Zhang wins prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award to develop non-Cas9 CRISPR-Cas tools for human genome engineering

Yan Zhang wins prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award to develop non-Cas9 CRISPR-Cas tools for human genome engineering

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Apr 23, 2024 – We are thrilled to announce that Yan Zhang, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry at the University of Michigan, has won a distinguished CAREER Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program offers awards in support of…

Collaboration is Key at Upcoming RNA Symposium (Michigan Medicine Headlines)

March 22, 2017  //  FOUND IN: Updates & Resources Michigan Medicine faculty and staff will soon have the opportunity to learn more about one of the newest — and most innovative — fields of medical research. The second annual U-M Center for RNA Biomedicine symposium takes place on Friday, March 31 at various sites across…

“The CRISPR Craze: Scientific Breakthroughs Come to the Prepared when Least Expected”

The 2020 Nobel Prize of Chemistry recognizes Emmanuelle Charpentier, Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin, Germany, and Jennifer Doudna, University of California, Berkeley, USA, “for the development of a method for genome editing.” Every year, the University of Michigan Complex Systems invites U-M faculty to comment about the Nobel Prizes awards. In…

Five faculty members honored in 2024 class of Rogel Scholars

Five faculty members honored in 2024 class of Rogel Scholars

By Paul Avedisian We are thrilled to announce that five faculty members of the Center for RNA Biomedicine have been honored as Rogel Scholars by the Rogel Cancer Center at the University of Michigan. The Rogel Scholars awards program provides support for exceptional faculty dedicated to achieving impact through novel breakthroughs in cancer research – a select…