GRADUATE STUDENT, PHARMACOLOGY

Assma was born and raised in Aleppo, Syria, before moving to Boston to pursue her bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Harvard University. Early in her undergraduate studies, she joined Professor Elliot Chaikof’s lab, where she worked on developing self-assembling protein-based nanoparticles for therapeutic delivery. Her senior thesis was titled Bring It In: Machine Learning-Enabled Design of Novel Cell-Penetrating Peptides for Ex Vivo Delivery of Gene Editors. 

Currently, Assma is pursuing her PhD in the Yale Pharmacology Department as part of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program, where she joined the Spiegel lab to develop novel bifunctional molecular platforms for therapeutic applications. Outside the lab, Assma enjoys photography, pottery, and playing (allegedly out of tune) the ukulele.