Page 29 - CBAC Newsletter 2017

Q & A: Jiajing Xu, Ph.D. Student

Department of Biomedical Engineering
Yoram Rudy Laboratory

Cardiac Excitation & Arrhythmias

At a glance

Education:

• 2008 B.Eng., Biomedical Engineering,
Zhejiang University, China
• x '18 Ph.D., Biomedical Engineering
Washington University in St. Louis

Research Interests:

KCNQ1/KCNE1 interaction in the cardiac IKs channel & its
physiological consequence

How long have you been in your current position?

8 years.

What is it that you do in your research?

To bridge the understanding at the molecular and cellular levels in ion channels, to provide potential explanations
of the slow activation and the enlarged macroscopic current of KCNQ1 with KCNE1 co-expressed with molecular
details.

While growing up, what kind of upbringing and experiences that may have inspired your career choice?

Growing up in an environment with respect to nature and science, I am amazed by science and technology since I
was young. Naturally, I came along in the science-engineering track from my high school to college days. After I got
involved in some projects related to physiology, cardiology and neuroscience, I started to have a great interest in the
application of engineering techniques, i.e. modeling and computer science (CS), in physiology.

I started with all fundamental science and general engineering courses in my college – basically tried to take all the
general sci-tech courses if possible. I felt a lack of connection between the CS techniques and biology – 10 years
ago, the computer science field was already well-developed but I only saw a few applications in biology. This could be
wrong as I had limited resources at that time. Anyhow, with such a “blind” faith, I chose biomedical engineering as
my future.

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