Joshua Yap, Lilith Schwartz, and Ashley Clemens join TKL

TKL welcomes undergraduate student Joshua Yap, Chemistry PhD student Lilith Schwartz, and research engineer Ashley Clemens to the lab.

Joshua Yap is a second year undergraduate student majoring in Bioengineering at UCLA. He is an active member of the UCLA Biomedical Engineering Society’s Build Team and Tau Beta Pi. His current research interests include developing accessible point-of-care diagnostics involving infectious diseases for medical application. In his free time, he enjoys playing games with friends, watching and playing sports, hiking, and other outdoor activities.

Lilith is a Chemistry PhD student on the chemical biology track at UCLA. She has a B.A. in chemistry and a minor in music theory from Vassar College. At Vassar, Lilith studied bacterial proteins involved in transferring antibiotic resistance genes. Following her interest in antibiotic resistance and infectious diseases, Lilith is interested in developing point of care diagnostics and drug susceptibility assays in the Kamariza lab. Outside the lab, Lilith sings in the UCLA Chorale and enjoys cooking/baking fun recipes, reading queer literature, hiking, and playing the piano!

Ashley received her B.S. in Biochemistry from UCLA. She has been working in biotech for the past 3 and a half years, and is eager to bring her newly found skills from industry to UCLA to contribute to a fantastic work environment in the lab. Simultaneously, she also wants to grow her research skills in a lab that focuses on point of care diagnostics, where the technologies can reach underserved communities. In her spare time, she enjoys reading manga, playing video games, and exploring new places. She is also an avid fan of music, with her current focus on kpop.