Student Representatives

Each year graduate students and postdocs are elected by their peers to representative positions.  These representatives play a critical role in enriching graduate student life through recruitment and orientation of new students, participation in Graduate Training Committee meetings, organization of the Pharmacology retreats, coordinating special events and communicating the needs of the graduate students to the Graduate Training Committee and the department chair. They also participate in faculty meetings. Through these activities, the student representatives gain valuable leadership experience, the ability to positively influence the department’s graduate program, and serve as an information conduit between the graduate students and the faculty.

Meet our current representatives:

Alfredo Gonzalez

Born in Central America, raised in the U.S., Alfredo received his B.S. in Biochemistry from Providence College. Following brief research stints at Harvard and the Broad Institute, in 2020 he joined the laboratory of Paul Boutros as a PhD student. His research focuses on the development of personalized therapies for sarcoma, childhood associated cancers, and the predictive modeling of patient outcomes.

Shirley Zhang

My name is Shirley. I lived in the Bay Area before I came to UCLA for undergraduate school. I received a B.S. in MIMG in Spring 2020. I became interested in molecular virology and immunology through undergraduate courses, and joined Drs. Ting-Ting Wu’s and Sam Chow’s labs in senior year of college. This experience affirmed my interest in research, and I am looking to explore other fields, such as cancer, awaiting prophylactic and therapeutic treatments. In my free time, I enjoy running, doing pilates, reading, and writing.