Alexander Lee

 

My name is Alexander Lee, and I am a Georgia native. I graduated from the University of Georgia with a B.S. in Pharmaceutical Science. When I was a child, my grandmother passed away from leukemia and an uncle of liver disease, focusing me on medicine and disease. Later on, I wanted to be a pharmacist but found patient care and counseling to be unsatisfying during my time as a pharmacy technician. Instead, I turned to drug development and biomedical research. After graduating with my Bachelor’s, I was accepted into PREP, leading to an experience that I feel prepared me very well for life as a graduate student. Being a part of PREP@UGA has given me the opportunity to be more involved in specialized research in the infectious disease field and really helped broaden my view in conducting research that would help other researchers understand the basic biology to get a drug to work. During PREP, I joined the Moreno lab in the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases at the University of Georgia, a parasitology lab focused on Toxoplasma gondii. My research project was investigating the Coenzyme Q3 protein which is responsible for making Ubiquinone, an electron transporter in the Electron Transport Chain. Finding differences between T. gondii and human Coq3 would enable the development of drugs to target Toxoplasma effectively. Being able to work in a parasitology-based infectious disease lab for my PREP experience has broadened my view on disease and solidified my decision in pursuing a PhD in infectious disease and drug development. It fully prepared me for starting graduate school this fall and pursuing biomedical research! After the PREP@UGA program, I will be starting in the Integrated Life Sciences (ILS) PhD program at the University of Georgia. Go Dawgs!