Allen Y. Chen is currently an MD-PhD candidate at HMS. He received his PhD from the Harvard Biophysics program in affiliation with Harvard-MIT Medical Engineering/Medical Physics. His thesis research in the lab of Prof. Timothy Lu at MIT was on applications of synthetic biology to production and patterning of self-assembling amyloid materials, and he pursued additional training in human genetics in the lab of Prof. Christopher Walsh at Boston Children's Hospital/HHMI. He graduated AB summa cum laude in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard College and received an MPhil in Chemistry from University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Going forward he hopes to apply his background in quantitative biology, genetics, and technology development to study genetically defined diseases.