Derrick Chong

Derrick Chong
Home Institute: University of British Columbia
Supervisor: Dr. Trevor Moraes

Hello! I am an Honours Microbiology & Immunology student at UBC. I originally enrolled in university with the goal of becoming a botanist, but I became fascinated by how microbes interact with humans and the world around us. Therefore, for the past four years I have traversed the field of microbiome research in both Canadian and American institutions in host models ranging from plant roots, the skin and the gut. For the Amgen Scholars program, I decided that I would diversify my experiences and move beyond the microbiome in order to understand how exactly microbes interact with us on a molecular level.

Befittingly, my supervisor is Dr. Trevor Moraes, who specializes in understanding the transport proteins on the membranes of pathogenic bacteria. At the interface between bacteria-environment or bacteria-host is a membrane. The membrane is the site of critical functions, reactions and interactions in all living cells. Transport proteins shuttle important substrates out of the cell or facilitate their placement on the membrane. Working with bioinformatician Dr. David Curran, my project this summer is developing and utilizing bioinformatic tools, to investigate what sort of substrates are transported by SLAM, a family of transporters recently discovered by the Moraes Lab that transport pathogenic factors in bacterial pathogens. By understanding the substrates of SLAM and how it contributes to a pathogen's lifestyle, we can identify targets for therapeutics and vaccines. 

I am privileged to have been involved in academic research for every year of my undergraduate degree. The Amgen Scholars program would provide the opportunity for me to reach like-minded students who have a passion for research and give me the chance to experience bioinformatics research at The University of Toronto. This is incredibly important for me as I have recently completed my interviews for the MD/PhD program at UofT. This program would help me decide if computational research in Toronto is the career choice that I will decide to take in the future.