Minhao is the Ming K. Jeang Scholarship Endowment Awardee

The Ming K. Jeang Scholarship endowment is for the scientific education exchange between the U.S. and China.  It is awarded to a Chinese national who has shown a promising scientific career after completing his graduate education at the University of Arizona.

The endowment for 2020-21 is $2,432.68. The Graduate College provides an additional $5,000 tuition scholarship.

Minhao Chen a student in the Molecular & Cellular Biology track of Applied Biosciences has been named the 2020 Ming K Jeang Scholarship Foundation awardee.

Below in his own word, Minhao Chen describes his research interest and the focus of his internship studies:

I am Minhao Chen, an international graduate student from China, Shanghai. I would like to thank the Ming K. Jeang Foundation for giving me a precious chance to win this award. Currently, I am a graduate student with Applied Biosciences major under Molecular & Cellular Biology track and I am doing research in Dr. Michael Riehle’s Laboratory(link is external). Hopefully, I can graduate and get my PSM degree in Spring 2021.

This laboratory is focusing on mosquito, Anopheles stephensi (Aste) a primary vector of Malaria parasite, and Aedes aegypti (Aaeg) a mosquito can spread Dengue virus and Zika virus. The previous researches about AaegPTEN showed many splice variants and differently expression in tissues and developmental stages. PTEN is a major inhibitor for protein transcription and overexpression of PTEN can help Aste fight against Malaria parasites. For my research, the hypothesis is can AstePTEN have splice and express differently in tissues and developmental stages. My research includes determining Aste Phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) splice variants, making PTEN-specific transgenic Anopheles stephensi, and identifying physiological changes of transgenic Anopheles stephensi. Right now, I am working on the DNA cloning for sequencing which can be finished in September and everything in my study plan goes really well.

I have stayed in the US for 7 years from a high school student and I think the best word to describe the US is diversity.  Also, I have been influenced by both the Eastern Asian culture and Western cultures. After graduation, I am willing to apply a job in Takeda Pharmaceutical Company’s researching institution and getting working experience for three years. Later I will go to a bigger pharmaceutical company like Roche, Bayer, and Pfizer because I am interested in the drugs development and analysis, those companies’ researching institutions are located in Shanghai which is my hometown, and I can using both Chinese language, Japanese language, and English language to do my jobs. If possible, I will apply PhD program in the universities in the United States after my three years job career, and I am pretty sure when I start to apply a PhD program, I have already found a very interesting research topic for it.