Team

Prof. Tsui-Fen Chou

Faculty Director

Kerckhoff 225 (ext 6772)

Dr. Tsui-Fen Chou's story begins on the island of Taiwan, where she graduated from National Taiwan University, the country's most prestigious university. She left this tropical climate for the icy lakes of the Midwest, completing a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Minnesota. Assuming she had experienced enough snow to last a lifetime, she returned to the tepid climates of Southern California as a post-doctoral fellow in the Deshaies Lab at the California Institute of Technology, wherein she played a pivotal role in the discovery of a new class of potential anti-cancer drugs targeting the enzyme p97.

Building off of her successes, in 2012, Dr. Chou catapulted to a faculty position at LA BioMed, where she was Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, Division of Medical Genetics, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Dr. Chou is also a member of the Signal Transduction and Therapeutics Program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. She moved her lab to Caltech in September of 2019 and is currently a research professor in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering.

Dr. Chou is interested in understanding the mechanisms of disease causing mutations of p97/VCP ATPase, a key player in cell proteasome and autophagy function, and has used p97 inhibitors as tools to develop pathway-specific inhibitors. Her main research focus is on discovering underlying mechanisms that may lead to new therapeutic targets for cancer and rare disease. She is an excellent teacher and mentor - dedicating time to train students at every level (high school, college, graduate, etc.) - and is heavily invested in the success of her current and former employees and students. She is generous with her knowledge and enjoys sharing her extensive experience in medicinal chemistry, cancer cell biology, and biological chemistry with a particular interest in proteomics and enzymology.

Dr. Ting-Yu Wang

Staff Scientist

Beckman Institute 224

Ting-Yu Wang grew up in Taiwan and obtained his basic training, including bachelor degree (Biological Science and Technology) at National Chiao Tung University and PhD degree (Biotechnology) at National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. Ting-Yu then did his postdoctoral training with Regius Professor Christopher Secombes at the University of Aberdeen, UK, where he found that lineage/species-specific expansion of the antiviral protein Mx gene family in teleosts. In 2019, he relocated to US as postdoc in the Section of Immunity and Infection at the University of Southern California and worked with Professor Pinghui Feng to study the mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 employs immune response and reprograms cellular metabolic processes by using the QExactive Plus Orbitrap LC-MS/MS System. During the training, he was responsible for the development and application of technologies for qualitative and quantitative UPLC-MS/MS proteomic and metabolic analysis. Currently, he works at the PEL on maintenance and operation of mass spectrometers, protein sample preparation, and data analysis.

Dr. Baiyi Quan

Staff Scientist

Beckman Institute 211

Baiyi got his Bachelor in chemical biology from Peking University under the supervision of Prof. Chu Wang, where he was introduced to the world of chemoproteomics and mass spectrometry. He then decided to pursue a Ph.D. degree at Duke University under the supervision of Prof. Michael Fitzgerald. In Fitzgerald lab, Baiyi works on utilizing one or multiple protein stability profiling techniques, including Stability of Proteins from Rates of Oxidation (SPROX), Thermal Proteome Profiling (TPP), and Limited Proteolysis (LiP), to identify protein targets of bioactive small molecules and biomarkers. After his graduation from Duke, Baiyi joined PEL in 2022 as a staff scientist. Baiyi has a broad interest in various proteomic techniques, including developing novel techniques and utilizing and implementing existing techniques to address important biological problems. Out of the lab, Baiyi enjoys his seemingly boring but actually inspiring everyday life.

Marion Pang

Graduate Student

Beckman Institute 201

Marion Pang is a graduate student in the Caltech Bioengineering PhD option. Originally from Singapore, Marion studied Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. During her time there, she worked with Prof Hai-Quan Mao studying nanoparticle polymer chemistry development for drug delivery therapeutics. Subsequently, she returned to Singapore to work with Prof. Hanry Yu at A*STAR to leverage machine learning techniques in food-science applications, as well as develop a novel manufacturing technique for food processing. At Caltech, she working under the supervision of Prof. Tsui-fen Chou and Prof. Michael Roukes on the development of single-cell proteomics using LC-MS systems integrated with novel nanosensor arrays for single-molecule analysis. Outside of the lab, Marion enjoys spending time with her dog Sencha (and other dog Latte back in Singapore), bouldering as well as playing music and gaming!
Past Work/Training:
Research Officer (NSS BS-PhD Fellow) at Institute of Bioengineering and Bioimaging (IBB), A*STAR Singapore
Undergraduate Research Assistant at Institute for NanoBioTechnology (INBT), Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD
Research Assistant at DSO National Laboratories, Singapore
CEE-RSI Summer Research Scholar at MIT Physics of Living Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston MA
Education:
B.S in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD

Dr. Yanping Qiu

Postdoctoral Scholar

Beckman Institute 201

Yanping got his Bachelor's in biopharmaceuticals at China Pharmaceutical University. After that, he took part in Prof. Wen Liu's group to study the biosynthesis of unique natural product RiPPs (Ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides) using mass spectrometry at the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He completed his first postdoc training at the University of South Carolina to study the isolation and biosynthesis of natural products with Prof. Jie Li. Now, he is a postdoc at Chou's lab using proteomics to study special protein functions. He is good at analyzing peptide's natural product intermediate using mass spectrometry.