Eric Ashkarian (eashkari@uci.edu)
Hello! My name is Eric Ashkarian, and I’m very excited to be an OCPT Coordinator for the 2024-2025 academic year. I am a fourth year Chemistry major with future plans to pursue a PhD in organic chemistry. I conduct research in the Rychnovsky lab, and am currently working on the total synthesis of a biologically active natural product. Though I am not a tutor this year, I am still available to help those who need it. Just ping me on the OCPT discord! Fun fact about me: I am actually pretty nice in person and I don’t always look scary like in my picture. Looking forward to interacting with you all!
Grant Lai (ghlai@uci.edu)
Hello! My name is Grant Lai. As of Fall 2024, I am a fourth-year Chemistry and Biological Sciences major. I work in the Nowick lab, researching and synthesizing peptide antibiotics. You will probably find me rambling about chemistry and attempting to guess names and faces. I also tend to ask specific questions and give dry jokes because I enjoy nuance and humor. In the name of learning, in the pursuit of understanding, for there is so much to know and so little that I know.
Junan Zhu (junanz1@uci.edu)
Hi everyone! My name is Junan Zhu, and I’m a fourth-year Biochemistry and Molecular Biology student planning to pursue a PhD in Cancer Biology-related fields. I currently work in the Jusiak Lab, building a model for Chimeric Antigen Receptor Macrophages (CAR-Macs) anti-cancer immunotherapies in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. When I’m not doing research or school work I like to write music with my guitar and go on birding trips with the Birding Club. A piece of advice I’d give is to study with friends because it’d help you get more familiar with the content than studying on your own. (And count your Carbons. That too.)