ANDO LAB at CORNELL

Bio: Nozomi was born in Denver, CO and grew up in the suburbs of Boston, MA. She received her BS from MIT where she was a physics major and music performance minor. She was drawn to the spaceship-like feel of the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) and went to Cornell University for her PhD in physics. As a graduate student in Sol Gruner’s lab, she made her own diamond cells for high-pressure X-ray scattering studies. She then went on to work as a postdoctoral fellow in chemistry in Cathy Drennan’s lab at MIT, where she developed a fascination with metalloenzymes. In 2014, she was appointed Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University and started a research program that combines X-ray physics and structural enzymology. In 2018, the Ando lab moved to Cornell University when she joined the faculty in Chemistry & Chemical Biology. She is a field member in the Department of Physics and the Field of Biophysics.

Interests outside of the lab: Nozomi is a classically trained soprano, so her serious hobby is music. She also enjoys observing and naming wild woodland animals. The kitchen is her lab outside of lab. Her various fermentation experiments include making bread (yeast), natto (Bacillus subtilis), miso (Aspergillus oryzae), and various Japanese tsukemono. Her current tools of choice are Japanese donabe pots made of ancient clay. The clay is sourced from regions that used to form the bed of Lake Biwa in prehistoric times and is thought to contain lots of fossilized microbes.

Nozomi's recommendations:
Books (especially for new members): “Unix and Linux: Visual QuickStart Guide” by Deborah Ray and Eric Ray, “Gene Machine” by Venki Ramakrishnan, "The Exceptions" by Kate Zernike
Music: Renee Fleming’s Night Songs is perfect for grant-writing, paper-writing, and rainy evenings. Laufey is the other go-to.

Bio: Steve grew up in San Jose, CA. He majored in Physics at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, and did a PhD in Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell. He completed a very biophysics-y thesis, under the direction of Lois Pollack, about how electrostatic forces modulate nucleic acid structure in solution using a mix of atomistic modeling and SAXS experiments. He joined Nozomi Ando's lab at Princeton as a postdoc in 2014. There, he applied his SAXS chops to allosteric enzymes, and turned to diffuse scattering from protein crystals as a means of determining correlated motions. He is the author of several software tools used by the lab, including REGALS, EFA, mdx-lib, and mdx2. In 2022, Steve became a beamline scientist at CHESS, where he upgraded instrumentation and data collection software at the macromolecular crystallography beamline 7b2 to support serial crystallography and high-pressure crystallography using a diamond anvil cell. He returned to the Ando lab in 2025 to lead The Diffuse Project.

Scientific interests: Protein motion, enzyme allostery, X-ray instrumentation, diffuse scattering, nucleic acid folding and electrostatics

Lab responsibilities: Steve helped mentor and contributed to various projects in the lab. He currently leads the diffuse scattering subgroup.

Interests outside of the lab: When he is not doing science, Steve enjoys family, making and listening to music, cycling, carpentry, hiking, electronic noise-makers, and tide pools.

Steve's recommendations:
Sport: Hiking (some of) the Finger Lakes Trail
Book: "Numerical Recipes: the Art of Scientific Computing"
Food: Gimme coffee

Bio: Xiaokun grew up in Jinan, China. Her undergraduate life involved a lot of classical music performances and stargazing in the mountains, and the first research experience in Prof. Bo Wang’s lab fabricating metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) into devices. She continued to work on MOFs during her Ph.D. in Prof. Omar Yaghi’s lab, where was trained in inorganic/organic syntheses, and in small-molecule crystallography focusing on variable-temperature experiments that probe properties of materials. Driven by a deep love of structures and dynamics, Xiaokun joined the Ando Lab in 2022. She’s turning into a proper protein biochemist while still keeping some stubborn chemistry brain, and now she has a growing interest in evolution.

Scientific interests: Xiaokun gets excited when protein functions and chemical reactions can be explained by a movie of structural changes, and is intrigued by the methods to characterize them.

Lab responsibilities: Xiaokun is in charge of making sure that our chemical waste SOP is both compliant and what we think is environmentally ethical.

Interests outside of the lab: Xiaokun has scattered curiosity/interest, which probably stemmed from her childhood hobby of reading random books in the bookstore. The only hobby she has stuck with for a long time is bouldering, though she’s known as the shortest person with the shortest arms in the gym. Despite having moved from the west coast, Xiaokun finds Ithaca too warm and is often wearing a T-shirt in the middle of winter.

Xiaokun's recommendations:
Music: Bach for focused time, nujabes for chilling time; Taiwanese Hokkien musics are awesome.
Food: Hakacha is the best restaurant in Ithaca.
Book: Cosmos by Carl Sagan

Bio: Neti was born and raised in India. She moved to America in 2013 and continued high school in Chicago. She completed her undergraduate studies at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Neti was first exposed to scattering techniques as an undergraduate in the Perez-Salas Lab at UIC, where she studied the movement of cholesterol in the lipid bilayer using neutron scattering. Her fascination with scattering and biophysics led her to the Ando Lab in 2021.

Scientific interests: Neti is interested in techniques that give insight into protein dynamics such as diffuse scattering and HP-MX.

Interests outside of the lab: Outside of the lab, Neti is an amateur gardener, spending most of her free time taking care of her plants. She likes the challenge of growing tropical plants and trees in the Ithaca climate. Growing red nana brain peppers has been one of her biggest achievements, and one of her current projects include growing a sugar apple tree! She also likes to dance, cook, clean, and draw to relax. Neti's secret is that she doesn't actually like hot peppers. She likes to grow them and feed them to other people. Another lesser known fact about Neti is that she is a chess champion. Not the synchrotron (although she could be), but the actual game.

Neti's recommendations:
Food: Any perfectly ripened fruit (preferably mango or sugar apples). Neti is also known for sharing her garden produce with the lab.
Book: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Bio: Haoyue grew up in Jinan, China. She received her bachelor’s degree in applied physics from Nankai University. Haoyue tried different research in optics, single molecular biology and cell biology during her undergraduate study and finally confirmed her interest in biophysics, which led her to Cornell. During the rotations at Cornell, she was attracted by the capabilities of proteins and joined the Ando lab.

Scientific interests: Haoyue is interested in protein dynamics and developing methods to better investigate them.

Lab responsibilities: Haoyue designed our post-group meeting feedback survey and also contributes to our lab GitHub.

Interests outside of the lab: Dancing, tree climbing, cooking, and eating. Haoyue is a self-proclaimed dumpling-making expert and she has many hobbies including learning as many foreign languages as possible.

Haoyue's recommendations:
Food: Chuan Puo Puo chili sauce, Liang Pin Pu Zi Crispy Chinese Date, Tiramisu (she no longer recommends Liang Pin Pu Zi Crispy Pancake)
Movie: Zootopia

Bio: Chloe was raised in Howell, New Jersey. She went to Franklin & Marshall College for Chemistry and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. There, she developed an interest in structural biology and spectroscopy, which culminated in her honors thesis on the photophysics of green-fluorescent proteins under Prof. Christine Phillips-Piro. Now, Chloe focuses on nitrogenase-like proteins, specializing in anaerobic prep and single-particle cryo-EM.

Scientific interests: Protein structure and function, cryo-EM, X-ray crystallography, metalloproteins

Lab responsibilities: Chloe is in charge of the lab Bluesky account.

Interests outside of the lab: Chloe has been dancing for 20 years, finding ways to integrate it into her academic journey. She also enjoys knitting, painting, running, and baking. She promised to adapt her dance her thesis one day.

Chloe's recommendations:
Food: baked mac and cheese, stir fry, herbal tea, breakfast burritos from the farmers market.
Music: Blasting Charli XCX to drown out the noises of the antechamber.

Bio: A native of Portland, Oregon, Raley received her bachelor’s degree from Columbia University, where she double majored in environmental chemistry and music. Her research journey began by using mass spectrometry to detect lingering insecticide contamination in honey and at bee foraging sites following mass bee deaths, and she found that it was possible to mitigate neonicotinoid accumulation. In Dr. Alex Halliday’s geochemistry lab at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, she explored nickel isotopes to better understand modal metasomatism in the Earth’s mantle. Additionally, she has worked in analytical chemistry and utilized deep learning to classify cryo-electron microscopy images. Raley joined the Ando lab in 2022 where she is excited to build upon her past research skills in analytical chemistry, structural biology, and biophysical chemistry. She enjoys the Ando lab’s interdisciplinary approach to research and the lab’s love of food! She also has a half-time appointment at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) at beamlines ID7A and ID7B2.

Scientific interests: High-pressure biology / extremophiles, biogeochemistry, structural dynamics, x-ray instrumentation / method development, evolution of life, and cryo-EM.

Interests outside of the lab: Raley is a classically trained pianist who also plays the celesta, harpsichord, and pipe organ. She enjoys aikido, ultimate frisbee, cooking, painting, and travel.

Raley's recommendations:
Food: Dim sum, shave ice, and afternoon tea
Music: Bach, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich

Bio: Yue spent her childhood on the west coast before moving to Dallas, Texas halfway through elementary school. She received her BS in Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). At UTD, she worked under Mihaela Stefan synthesizing organic polymers and small molecules to make organic field effect transistors and drug delivery micelles. She also did research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center under Luke Rice, characterizing the binding affinities of microtubule associated proteins. Her interest in the structural dynamics of proteins led her to Cornell where she joined the Ando Lab.

Scientific interests: Yue is interested in way too many things. She is trying to focus on the structural mechanism behind the intricate allosteric controls of ribonucleotide reductase and how it evolved.

Interests outside of the lab: Yue enjoys pop Asian culture, running the whole gamut of videogames, cosplay, fanfics, webfics, cooking (?), music, animation, and manhwa/hua/ga. She also adores social deduction boardgames, origami, and spiders!

Yue's recommendations:
Food: Following the school of thought of lab alumnus Darren, Yue believes in at least trying anything edible, and enjoys most of it too.
Book: The Hidden Life of Trees (both versions) by Peter Wohleben
Animation: Arcane from Fortiche

Bio: Jyoti was born in West Bengal, the northeastern part of India, where she lived until college. She completed her undergraduate studies in Visva-Bharati, majoring in chemistry and minoring in physics. Then she moved to IIT Bombay to earn her MS, where she was first introduced to the field of structural biochemistry. During her MS she worked with Prof. Ruchi Anand to understand the mechanism of NtrC family Protein to activate the transcription by electron microscopy, with the ultimate goal of developing a whole-cell biosensor based on its function. She has also worked in an ultra-fast spectroscopy lab where she studied protein folding-unfolding dynamics by different spectroscopic and computational methods. Her interest in the structure, dynamics, and functional relationship of proteins led her to the Ando Lab.

Research interests: Structure and dynamics study of metalloproteins, allosteric regulation, and enzyme evolution using different bio-physical tools.

Interests outside the lab: In her free time Jyoti enjoyed cooking which she learned after coming to the USA, reading novels, hanging out with friends, and doing poetry recitations.

Jyoti's recommendations:
Food: Biriyani, Ice Cream, Coffee, and Coconut-mango pastry
Books: Surely you are joking Mr. Feynman, Gilbert W Castellan: Physical Chemistry, Nostoneer, Rabindranath Tagore

Bio: Pasa was born in Virginia and grew up in Thailand and went to study in London until college. Pasa was introduced to the wonders of structural biology in Professor Ando’s course and joined the Ando lab in 2022. A fun fact about Pasa is that he was Thailand's National LEGO champion and he was one of the top students in the UK Math Olympiad and Chemistry Olympiad. Pasa was co-mentored by Darren, Haoyue, and Yue and graduated in May 2023. He then made a dramatic return to Cornell in 2024 as a graduate student!

Research interests: Pasa is interested in applying time-resolved cryo-EM to probe enzyme dynamics and further understand the evolution of enzyme allostery.

Interests outside the lab: Pasa spends a lot of his free time playing music. He was a cellist in the Cornell Symphony Orchestra and Cornell Eastern Music Ensemble, a saxophonist for the Big Red Marching Band, and plays his favorite anime songs on the piano.

Pasa's recommendations:
Food: Ka Prao, Thai Chicken Rice, and Xi’an Street Foods’ Chilli Beef

Bio: Gio was raised outside of Buffalo, NY; his parents come from the country of Georgia. He completed his bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Notre Dame in 2025. As an undergraduate, Gio worked in electron-molecule interactions with Professor Sylwia Ptasinska in the Notre Dame Radiation Lab. Gio’s work in dissociative electron attachment studies involving organic molecules inspired his interest in the connection between the laws of physics and biological processes. Gio’s fascination with experimental physics tools and their ability to attack biological questions brought him to the Ando Lab in 2025.

Scientific interests: Gio’s interests range from Atomic, Molecular, and Optical (AMO) Physics to biological fields such as evolutionary biology and enzyme evolution.

Interests outside of lab: classical and jazz piano, singing, playing and watching soccer, occasionally minesweeper and other video games. Gio is also a fan of the NFL, particularly the Buffalo Bills.

Gio's recommendations:
Food: Georgian cuisine, especially Khachapuri
Book: Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
Movie: Cars 2

Bio: Jaidyn grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana (west of New Orleans). She is majoring in Biological Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her interests and introduction to the function and structure of proteins come from taking a Comparative Physiology course. Jaidyn joined the Ando Lab through the CHAMPS program, and she works with Neti.

Scientific interests: Jaidyn is interested in exploring computational biology and applying computational methods to studying proteins. She is interested in a holistic study of proteins.

Interests outside of the lab:
Jaidyn is in an a capella group, Mediocre Melodies. She likes to watch tv shows, hammock on the slope, and go outdoors in her free time. During her time experiencing summers in Ithaca, Jaidyn has enjoyed visiting many parks.

Jaidyn’s recommendations:
Movies: The Harry Potter Series
Musicals: Hamilton
Books: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Bio: Aaryan grew up in Millburn, New Jersey, and is currently a sophomore majoring in Chemistry and Biology in the College of Arts & Sciences. His interest in biochemical and biophysical research was spurred by his biochemistry class. He is a Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholar, and in the Ando Lab he is currently working with Haoyue.

Scientific interests: Aaryan is interested in studying the structure, function and dynamics of proteins using biophysical and computational methods. He is especially interested in studying the mechanics of protein allostery.

Interests outside of the lab: Aaryan enjoys reading, cooking, exercising with his friends, and going on hikes. He especially enjoys exploring parks and trails in Ithaca during the summer.

Aaryan's recommendations:
Books: 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
Movies: Up, Shutter Island
Food: Celery

Bio: Marcus is from Long Island, NY and is a senior studying Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering. He plans to pursue dentistry after graduation and is a Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholar. In the Ando Lab, Marcus is currently involved in Project Diffuse and works with Xiaokun.

Scientific interests: Marcus is interested in exploring crystallography techniques and optimizing crystal tray screening conditions. He is especially curious about the mathematical modeling of the geometry of protein crystals and the thermodynamics of protein allostery.

Interests outside of lab: Marcus loves to learn languages and can speak Mandarin and Tagalog, both with intermediate proficiency. He enjoys trying other cultures’ foods and learning cultural traditions while using language as a way to bridge connections with others. Committed to learning and improving personal wellness, he loves to freestyle dance, read, exercise, journal, and meditate.

Marcus' recommendations:
Food: Xiao Long Bao, pad thai, purple yam
Books: Ikigai by Héctor García, Confessions of a Surgeon by Dr. Paul Ruggieri, Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins
Travel: Philippines, Japan, Costa Rica

Bio: Shaheer is from Long Island, NY. He is a senior majoring in Biological Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He plans to pursue medical school after graduation. He is currently working with Xiaokun in the Ando Lab.

Scientific interests: Shaheer’s interests lie in biochemistry and structural biology. He focuses on purifying and identifying structural features of proteins. He also is interested in exploring crystallography techniques.

Interests outside of lab: Shaheer is devoted to religious activities, involving himself in weekly Islamic events, discussions, and prayers. He loves playing basketball/soccer with his friends and watches NBA games occasionally. He also enjoys travelling internationally with his family.

Shaheer's recommendations:
Food: Biryani, brownies, grapes
TV: The Lying Game
Travel: Morocco, UAE, Spain

Bio: Sarah grew up in Brooklyn, NY and is a junior majoring in Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Sarah joined the Ando Lab through Cornell’s SURF program, and she works with Neti and Steve on Project DIFFUSE.

Scientific interests: Sarah's research interests lie in structural biology, with a focus on applying techniques such as X-ray crystallography to drug discovery and development.

Interests outside of the lab: In her free time, Sarah likes to read gripping thrillers, try new recipes, and spend time in nature. She also loves to play board games like Catan and aims to decrease her mile time.

Sarah’s recommendations:
TV: The Good Place, Breaking Bad, The Residence
Books: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, Out by Natsuo Kirino, Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Grams
Food: Rice rolls, dim sum, green tea KitKat, dark chocolate

Bio: Katie grew up outside of Boston, MA and is a junior studying Chemistry and Chemistry Biology. She works with Steve on Project Diffuse.

Scientific interests: Katie is broadly interested in structural biology, biophysics, and physical chemistry.

Interests outside of lab: In her free time, Katie enjoys reading books of all different genres, arts and crafts, and playing the flute.

Katie's recommendations:
TV: Derry Girls, Fleabag
Books: The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip
Music: Beach House, Alvvays

Bio: Panda was born in Costco's and trained in Garnet Chan's lab at Princeton University. He moved to Cornell University with the Ando lab in 2018. During the covid-19 shutdown, he guarded the lab as an essential worker. Currently, he is overseeing the grad office.

Scientific interests: Theoretically, interested in new theories.

Interests outside of the lab: Hanging out with mini Totoro.