Xuechen is a biochemist with a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of New Mexico. He has research experience in natural product biosynthesis, protein engineering, and functional genomics, including work on type II polyketide pathways.  He is currently a research scientist at the University of New Mexico, applying modern protein and peptide-engineering approaches to study PICK1, MDM2, and other scaffold protein systems. His goal after his fellowship is to continue doing research in academia or biotech, advancing the discovery and engineering of proteins and peptides.