POCDx Member Profiles

Rick is a second-year bioengineering PhD student. Rick received a B.S. in chemical engineering from MIT. He has worked in a variety of fields at several institutions, including the National Cancer Institute (developing novel leukemia therapies for direct clinical application), the Whitehead Institute (using new genetics tools to model recent instances of positive genetic selection, with applications to HIV research), and the MIT Biomaterials Lab (engineering nanoparticles for potential biological applications). He worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for a year on two projects: creating biological screening panels in the interest of national defense and developing a device for detection and characterization of emerging viral diseases for application in the developing world. He also held an internship at the Booz Allen Hamilton technology consulting firm where he worked on a project developing networks and tools to monitor the emergence and spread of global health risks. He is a certified EMT and has worked as a medical volunteer for impoverished communities in the Dominican Republic. He is fluent in Spanish and has traveled through most of the developing world in Latin America.

Augusto joined the UC Berkeley Bioengineering Graduate Group in 2009. He graduated from MIT with a degree in Biological Engineering. Augusto grew up in Tegucigalpa, Honduras before moving to Massachusetts for college. He has done research in a variety of topics in biology and medicine including DNA damage and repair, epilepsy, diagnostics, and microfluidics. He is currently developing tools for quantitative biology at the Herr lab.