Dr. Kin Lam Wong’s doctoral thesis, Decoding nutrient sensing and metabolic regulation in the Drosophila Hipk tumor model, examined the molecular links between diet and cancer. Using fruit flies as a model, he discovered that nutrient sensors and metabolic enzymes work closely with cancer-causing genes, favoring abnormal cell growth. His work provides a better understanding of cells that could be exploited in targeted cancer therapy in humans.

Kin Lam received a number of awards, including Dr. Bruce Brandhorst Graduate Prizes for the best PhD thesis (2020), best publication (2019) and best oral presentation (2018) within Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. He is a natural leader, mentoring many undergraduate students, who have now gone on to graduate school themselves, and doing most of his writing, lab work and research independently.

“I feel that [his] accomplishments are outstanding, and I rate him in the top 1% of graduate students that I have supervised and evaluated as a faculty member. I cannot think of a more worthy candidate,” says his supervisor, Esther Verheyen.

Says Wong, “My supervisor, Esther, is a superb mentor. She always encourages me to be curious and ask questions. She has passed on her enthusiasm and reasoning to me, and I will definitely keep all these virtues in mind no matter where I am.”

He is now a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Liqun Luo's lab at Stanford University, taking advantage of fly genetics to create tools to study neural circuit assembly in the developing brain.