Helena Chang Zin Ying
Doctoral Researcher
Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences
About
Helena obtained her bachelor’s degree in Microbiology at UC Davis and is currently a Ph.D.
student in the GEMS program at UIC. After earning her BS, Helena worked as a research
assistant in Dr. Sungjin Kim’s lab on adaptive NK cells for three years. Due to the COVID-19
pandemic, she had the opportunity to work part-time at the COVID lab, processing saliva
samples with RT-PCR. Helena’s research focus in the Kazlauskas lab is to understand the
mechanism used by HRECs to resist oxidative stress in high glucose.