Practice Summary
Pei-Hsien received a Bachelor of Arts with an emphasis in Biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University. As an undergraduate under the supervision of Dr. Bob Buchanan in the department of plant biology, she investigated the effects of redox status of transgenic cereal proteins on plant development and on human digestion in an attempt to improve the nutritional and the commercial value of cereal plants. Her undergraduate research developed protocols for the purification and identification of transgenic cereals proteins, which involved techniques ranging from traditional batch purification to 2-D gel and mass spectrometry. Her findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

At Stanford University, Pei-Hsien studied cell biology in the laboratory of Dr. Ron Kopito as a Stanford Graduate Fellow. She independently spearheaded a study in the lab to investigate the role extracellular misfolded proteins play in neurodegenerative and prion diseases. Her doctoral dissertation presented evidence for the infectious nature these protein aggregates can assume especially in the context of human diseases. During the course of her graduate studies, Pei-Hsien presented her work at various Stanford research events and professional conferences in the U.S. including The FASEB Conference on Amyloids and other Protein Conformational Diseases and the Society for Neuroscience Meeting. In addition to her laboratory experiences accumulated from both plant and mammalian cell biology labs, she had much experience in teaching both at U.C. Berkeley and at Stanford University.