Julie is an MD/PhD student who completed the first two years of the UNC School of Medicine curriculum and then joined the Cohen Lab and the Cell Biology and Physiology Department in 2019. She defended in 2023. Julie graduated from Pomona College in 2015, where she studied neuroelectrophysiology and the molecular mechanisms of memory impairment in Alzheimer’s Disease. After graduating and before moving to North Carolina, Julie spent two years in Baltimore’s Biomedical Research Center working as an IRTA Fellow at the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse. While there, she worked to develop and characterize novel genome engineering tools, such as CRISPR/Cas9 and AAV vector technology, to manipulate the rodent central nervous system with regional and cell-type specificity. She also worked on developing models of Parkinson’s Disease and HIV-associated Neurocognitive disorders. In the Cohen lab, Julie researched the role of aberrant TDP-43 species in proteostasis impairment in ALS, FTLD, and other age-related TDP-43 proteinopathies using in vivo and in vitro approaches based on a novel mouse model of disease. She investigated the interactions of ALS/FTLD-associated mutations in non-TDP-43 genes on TDP-43 aggregation. When not in the lab or clinic, Julie likes to spend her time outside walking, running, hiking, and biking. She is also a big fan of wine and cheese boards, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

In 2007, I graduated with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. After a year of military service and another year as a research assistant at Academia Sinica, I did my PhD work at the University of South Carolina, under the mentorship of Dr. Melissa Moss. There I studied amyloid-beta protein misfolding and aggregation involved in Alzheimer’s disease. After I received PhD in Biomedical Engineering in 2014, later the same year I joined Dr. Cohen’s research group at UNC. Currently, in the Cohen lab, I am working on the post-translational modification of tau protein and its role in different stages of neurodegenerative diseases and lifespan. In addition, I have collaborative research projects with Dr. Rick Meeker, and Dr. Graham Diering at UNC, Dr. Jerry Wang, and Dr. Laurie Sanders at Duke, Dr. John Hong at NIEHS as well as Dr. Anne Taylor at Xona Microfluidics. In my free time, I enjoy my time with my son Daniel and driving my car around.

Here is my CV