Vivian Nguyen

MCB @ UC Berkeley | Undergraduate Researcher in the Savage and Doudna Labs | NIH-MARC Fellow | SURF @ Rockefeller University

Berkeley, California, United States

About

Hi there! I’m a rising fourth-year undergrad pursing a B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology and minoring in Data Science at UC Berkeley. I’m passionate about the use of biochemistry, functional genomics, and protein engineering as tools to investigate and combat disease.

Experience

  • Undergraduate Researcher @ Savage and Doudna Labs at Innovative Genomics Institute
    Aug 2023 - Present · 2 yrs 11 mos

    - Engineering novel CRISPR-Cas9 PAM targeting variants using directed evolution and high-throughput screening strategies. - 2025-2027 NIH-MARC Scholar - ABRCMS 2025 Outstanding Poster Presentation Award in Biochemistry - 2025 and 2024 Rose Hills Scholar.

  • Chemers Neustein SURF Intern @ Vinogradova Lab at The Rockefeller University
    Jun 2026 - Present · 1 mo

    - Characterizing the functional role of reactive cysteines in alternatively spliced proteins during T-cell activation using CRISPR base-editing, chemoproteomics, and mass spectrometry

  • SAAS Berkeley (9 mos)
    • Data Consulting
      Jan 2026 - May 2026 · 5 mos

    • Data Mentorship
      Sep 2025 - Dec 2025 · 4 mos

  • Machine Learning Consultant at Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals
    Jan 2026 - May 2026 · 5 mos

    - LLM-powered pipeline for continuous evaluation of PubMed literature to identify, confidence score, and prioritize high potential therapeutic siRNA targets

  • Data Scientist at U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
    Aug 2025 - Dec 2025 · 5 mos

    -Applied graph neural networks (GNNs) to predict streamflow in small rivers within the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest -Analyzed 160K+ observations across 200+ rivers spanning 1980–2020 -Identified key relationships between streamflow and meteorological drivers (precipitation, temperature, wind, etc.)