Help Jenni with living expenses

For many graduate students, it is common for them to receive a stipend to support living expenses. However, that is not the case for the graduate student, Jennifer Pham. Jenni has been in the lab for over a year and a half and has proven to be irreplaceable. She has spearheaded the lab organization efforts by creating lab websites, starting and continuing to keep track of our inventory through a database she created, ordering lab supplies, and centralizing all experimental data since joining the lab.

As well as winning first place for her poster at RAD 2022, she was awarded a travel grant from ARVO for the 2022 annual meeting, where she was also a poster award finalist. After completing her first year of her Ph.D., she published her 1st first-author paper and is working on two more. Her research into glaucoma treatments has much potential for neurodegenerative diseases as a whole.

On top of her research work, Jenni also loves to mentor other students and has been the primary graduate student working with volunteer and summer students. She created a lab orientation guide to help with the onboarding process, made guides and provided tutorials for the experiments and instruments used in the lab, used the lab website as a central place to store all resources, and carried out teaching sessions to provide more background information to new lab members.

Jenni is strongly suited to research and academia, and she accomplished all these things despite needing to be provided a stipend. She came to the U.S. at the mere age of 11 with dreams of a better future. 

However, her green card application status prevents her from having a work permit to receive a stipend. Therefore, she can only accept scholarships, donations, and non-federal grants. 

This is why Jenni needs much help to pay for rent and other living expenses. Thus, I hope we can all play a part in supporting Jenni on her academic journey. Your contribution will give Jenni some financial security and the opportunity to continue her education in our country.

Jenni (wearing a pink shirt) at the airport, the very first time in the USA. So excited and so full of hope for a brighter future.

Jenny published her first-author paper in a peer-reviewed journal with an impact factor IF 7.7.

Jenni at the ARVO conference when she was a poster award finalist in 2022.

As a first-year Ph.D. student, Jenni was awarded a travel grant from ARVO for the 2022 annual meeting.

Jenni (in the middle) was awarded first place for her poster at Research Appreciation Day in 2022.

Jenni graduated from MedSci Program in 2021.

Jenni graduated from Texas Woman's University in 2019.