Dion Dickman
Principal Investigator
B.A. Washington University 1995-1999
Ph.D. Harvard University 2000-2005
Postdoc UCSF 2006-2011
Dion was born in Hawaii (in the same hospital as Barack Obama) on Valentine’s Day (a true romantic) and has lived in Hawaii, Santa Barbara, Washington State, Nebraska, St. Louis, Boston, and San Francisco, before finally planting roots in Southern California. Besides research and teaching, he enjoys pursuing his other passions which include reading spy thrillers and following politics as well as his beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers and Boston Red Sox (and USC Trojans ofcourse!).
Jerry Chien
Graduate Student
B.A. in Biological Sciences, Cornell University 2015
Jerry was born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan and moved to the suburb of Philadelphia for high school education when he was 14. During his undergraduate years working with Dr. Chun Han, Jerry was fascinated by the powerful genetic tools that Drosophila as a model system can bring to answer some of the biggest questions in neuroscience: How do different cell types interact with each other? How do neurons adapt to environmental perturbations such as injury or stress? After graduating from Cornell, Jerry moved to New York City to work as a research technician to study stem cell biology in tendon regeneration at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai under the guidance of Dr. Alice Huang. Now he is studying synaptic morphology and homeostasis at the Drosophila neuromuscular junction using molecular approach and electrophysiology. Outside of the lab, Jerry is also a big tennis fan and moving to the sunny Los Angeles makes him very happy to escape the real weather from the East Coast.
Nancy Tran
Graduate Student
B.S. in Biochemistry (Medicinal Chemistry), Arizona State University, 2014
M.S. in Biology, Arizona State University, 2018
Jiawen Chen
Graduate Student
B.A. in Neuroscience & B.A in Psychology, Boston University, 2018
Kaikai He
Graduate Student
Chengjie Qiu
Rebecca Stark
Elizabeth Loxterkamp
Elizabeth Loxterkamp was raised in Maine and in 2018 received two Bachelors degrees from Wellesley College, one in neuroscience with a concentration in molecular biology and the second in French. While at Wellesley, she worked in the lab of Dr. Deborah Bauer studying the effect of mutations in glutamate transporters on mechanosensory and chemosensory behavior in C. elegans. In Dr. Dickman’s lab she continues her research on glutamatergic synapses in drosophila, where she studies Neto, the obligatory auxiliary subunit of glutamate receptors at the drosophila neuromuscular junction. Outside of lab, she enjoys archery and exploring indie film and theater in LA.