Gordon Lao is a rising senior at UC Davis, majoring in Cell Biology. He aspires to obtain a Ph.D. and conduct his own research on cancer immunotherapy treatments. Gordon, formerly a MARC scholar, is an undergraduate researcher in Dr. Su-Ju Lin’s lab, which studies NAD + metabolism and regulation in budding yeast. As an Amgen scholar at UCLA, Gordon is conducting research in Dr. Timothy O’ Sullivan’s lab which studies the innate immune system in the context of various diseases. NK cells are cytotoxic innate lymphoid cells that produce cytokines and chemokines that impact immune response. Their ability to recognize stressed cells and mediate the killing of cancer cells have led to an increased interest in utilizing NK cells for anti-cancer immunotherapy. However, exposure to tumor cells and the tumor microenvironment (TME) has been shown to impact NK cell phenotypes and impair their anti-cancer functions. Recent studies have shown ascorbic acid to be an emerging immunotherapeutic factor, as it has implications in immune cell functions like T cell maturation. Gordon aims to further elucidate the effects of ascorbic acid on NK cells and explore its potential to engineer a more effective NK cell treatment for cancer immunotherapy. Gordon would like to thank Katelynn Kazane, Dr. Timothy O’ Sullivan, and everybody else in the lab for their patience, mentorship, and for creating a welcoming environment. He would also like to give a special thanks to the Amgen program and the directors for giving him the opportunity to conduct extramural research.