Zachary Cooper : Astronaut Scholarship
Zachary Cooper (’27, Molecular & Cell Biology/Business Administration) is passionate about advancing next-generation therapeutics through oncolytic virotherapy and programmable genome editing. He conducts research in the lab of Dr. David Schaffer at UC Berkeley, adapting CRISPRi/a technologies to modulate gene expression in oncolytic vaccinia virus, and at the Arc Institute under Dr. Patrick Hsu, where he is engineering programmable bridge recombinases. Zachary aims to leverage his interdisciplinary training in molecular biology and business to translate elite discovery into universal access by spinning out innovative technologies from the lab. In the future, he hopes to pursue a Ph.D. and build a career as a founder-scientist at the intersection of academic breakthroughs and biotech entrepreneurship.
