UW Biology undergraduate student, Lily Nguyen (Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Biochemistry), was recently named 2024-2025 Levinson Scholars. 

The Levinson Emerging Scholars (LES) Program is designed to support students who work on creative and sophisticated research projects in biosciences and related fields under the guidance of University of Washington faculty members.

Lily is a senior at the University of Washington majoring in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and Biochemistry. In the summer after her sophomore year, she joined the Kong Lab to study signaling pathway regulation and how defects in pathway activity affect embryonic development.

Her work focuses on investigating the pathogenesis of hydrocephalus, which is a condition that’s marked by an accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain. To do so, she will utilize embryonic stem cells and small molecule inhibitors to modulate signaling pathway activity and model defects in early brain development. In the future, she hopes that her research can inform new ways to screen for neurodevelopmental diseases and help develop targeted therapies. After graduating from UW, she intends to pursue a PhD in Biochemistry.

Outside of research, she likes to spend time with her friends, family and 2 cats, trying new restaurants, knitting and watching tv shows! She’s incredibly honored to have been selected as a Levinson Scholar and thank Art and Rita Levinson for their generous support, as well as for the support of the Mary Gates Research Scholarship and the ISCRM Undergraduate Summer Fellowship. She is immensely grateful for the mentorship of Dr. Jennifer Kong and everyone from the Kong Lab for their endless encouragement and for helping her grow as a researcher.

Congratulations, Lily!

Read the Levinson Scholar profiles on the UW Undergraduate Research webpage.