Crystal Perez

MD/PhD Student

I am an MD/PhD student at the University of Washington. For the PhD portion of my program, I joined the Molecular Engineering and Sciences department at the UW.

I graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. and M.S. in Biology. Throughout my time at Stanford, I worked in David Relman’s laboratory on a project investigating arsenic’s impact on the human gut microbiome of individuals chronically exposed through groundwater. I also completed an internship in E. Peter Greenberg’s lab through the UW STAR program where I spent a summer investigating quorum sensing behavior in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

In the Gibbons lab, I am interested in studying the various ways in which microbially produced metabolites from the human gut microbiome influence health outcomes (i.e., contributing to disease pathology or altering response to medications).

Outside the lab, I like to visit coffee shops and breweries as well as spend time outdoors doing yoga and trail running.