Thawatchai Chaijarasphong, PhD
My name is Thawatchai Chaijarasphong, but since that contains 7 syllables and 24 letters, people usually just call me Benz.
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After 18 years of living in Bangkok, Thailand, I went to continue my study in the US. I did my undergraduate years at Stanford University and went on to work on my PhD at University of California, Berkeley. I was in the Department of Chemistry at both places, with stronger focus on molecular biology at the latter. As an undergraduate student, I initially began with an avid interest in synthetic chemistry, but over time I became allured by the world of biology. Why? At a glance, biological systems are very complicated and chaotic, with thousands of different things enclosed in a cell, all appearing to have their own agendas. But somehow these things manage to cooperate together to perform amazing functions. To me, such contrast is absolutely beautiful, which was why I decided to shift my career towards the biological field.
As a PhD student at UC Berkeley, under the supervision of Associate Professor David Savage, my work had much to do with protein engineering, molecular biology, and molecular chassis (particularly I was working on a bacterial microcompartment called “carboxysome”. It was a very interesting, but long story, so please refer to Chaijarasphong et al., J Mol Biol, 2015 for further details.
Currently, my research interests are in using techniques from chemistry and molecular biology to develop methods to battle and diagnose shrimp diseases. We all love shrimp, but we usually don’t realize how easily they can contract diseases, get deformed, and die (but don’t worry - there has been no report that shrimp diseases can infect humans). In certain cases, massive deaths of shrimp can happen within days. This is bad for economy at every level, ranging from small shrimp farming businesses to the entire country. Therefore, preventing diseases and finding ways to treat them timely are crucial to sustainable shrimp farming economy. My specific projects at this moment include 1) development of cyanobacteria platform for delivery of shrimp therapeutic agents 2) application of CRISPR-Cas proteins in rapid point-of-care diagnosis of shrimp viral diseases. For those interested, please refer to “Research” section on the menu bar.
As a person, I consider myself a life-long learner. I believe that our capacity for learning never stops, and the more you learn, the more fulfilled person you become. I like to learn everything, related to my career or not, because in the end knowledge from starkly different domains may come to fit each other in amazing and unimaginable ways. For this reason, I have many interests and hobbies, including movies, music, video games, handicraft, programming, arts, etc. And more than anything, I like to discuss these with other people (only if they are willing to - I usually don't make people listen to me prattle on aimlessly :P)
I am also a strong advocate in “growth mindset”. What does this mean? It means that I believe anyone can become great researchers regardless of their background if they try hard and stay motivated. I believe that natural talents and intelligence, while undoubtedly helpful, are just very small parts of successes. Without diligence, curiosity, and motivation, one could not utilize their potential to the maximum. Therefore, for those interested in working with me, I am looking for individuals with said qualities, who believe that they can still grow even better. We will work together to ensure that you reach the height where you want to be.