Melody Gao graduated from Western Washington University in June of 2021 with a B.S. in Biochemistry. At Western, she worked as an undergraduate researcher in Dr. Jeanine Amacher’s lab investigating the selectivity and promiscuity of Class 1 PDZ domains, leading to a first author publication. Her most current project looks into substrate selectivity of Class A sortases, specifically at the beta 7-8 loop’s role in modulating substrate recognition.   As part of the UCLA’s Amgen Scholars program, Melody works in Dr. Stephanie Seidlits’s lab in the Department of Bioengineering. The Seidlits lab studies glioblastomas (GBM), a highly invasive and lethal brain cancer. Patients diagnosed with GBM survive a median of twelve months even with treatment due to the tumor’s ability to gain therapy resistance. The lab investigates how the tumor’s microenvironment, specifically the extracellular matrix, promotes drug resistance acquisition using bioengineered matrices as their model. These microenvironments are a better approximation of the native brain and provide a better platform for understanding how the environment affects tumor physiology.   Melody would like to thank Dr. Seidlits and her graduate student mentor Jesse Liang for supporting and mentoring her development as a scientist. Additionally, she would also like to thank the Amgen Foundation for providing this summer research opportunity at UCLA.