Columbia Graduate Student Named HHMI Gilliam Fellow

Alicia Chime is the first graduate student at Columbia University to be accepted into the Gilliam Fellows Program at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a program designed to launch promising PhD students into impactful scientific research careers while fostering inclusive training environments.

For Chime, applying for the prestigious fellowship was part of a continual process of “making yourself comfortable with being uncomfortable” as she pursues a career in science.

Her interest blossomed in her first year at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. “My biology professor took an interest in me and by my second semester, I started doing research in her lab,” Chime recalls. “It's almost as if I was pulled towards it. I liked asking questions and then going into the lab and getting to figure out the answers.”

After transferring to NYU, she switched her interest to neuroscience before changing fields again early in her graduate school career at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

“If I wasn’t taking risks, I don’t think I would be in my lab at Columbia, have such a great mentor, or such a great research experience,” Chime says.

We spoke to Chime about her research and path to science just before she traveled to HHMI to attend her first meeting of Gilliam Fellows.

What were your first research experiences like?

My lab at Borough of Manhattan Community College was really focused on developmental research. We extracted eggs from sea urchins to understand fertilization and to explore what kinds of bacteria are needed to support proper egg development.

I remember my first week there I broke a beaker, and I freaked out and didn't tell anyone. I thought I was going to get kicked out. Later I became friends with the lab manager, and she was like, “Yeah, that happens. We have a box of beakers under the sink.” That was really when I started to become comfortable.

I was always asking questions about how the sea urchins “know” how to respond to things, since they don't really have a typical brain, so my PI said I should go into neuroscience. I transferred to NYU, and her advice pushed me to join the neuroscience program. I worked in a lab trying to understand how mice respond to stress and anxiety and how that affects their relationships with their mothers and other mice.

But because I wasn’t involved in science in high school, I felt I was never really at the same level as my classmates. So after college, I went for a two-year program at Johns Hopkins, working as a research assistant. At Hopkins, you had your own independent project. You had to see things through. You had to be more rigorous. And I think that's where it clicked for me.

You made a big switch from neuroscience to biochemistry as a graduate student. How did that happen?

I rotated through Hashim Al-Hashimi’s lab in the second semester of my first year. I went in with no expectations, and figured if I didn't like it, I could rotate again somewhere else. And I ended up loving it. It was a battle with myself to spend years in neuroscience and then switch to biochemistry and learn a whole new field.

My mentor was instrumental. We had a long discussion about how he would teach me the things I didn’t know, and in return, I would be motivated, always show up, and ask questions. I think that in having that conversation prior to joining the lab, we’ve built a strong, trusting relationship and it’s been smooth sailing.

What questions are you trying to answer in your research?

Our lab studies nucleic acid dynamics—how DNA and RNA change their structure over time. They’re not static molecules; they adopt different conformations that influence what they can do in the cell. It's a bit like a person: sometimes you’re sitting down, or standing, or going for a run. You're still the same person, just in different physical states that dictate the activities you can do. That’s how different RNA or DNA structures enable different functions.

I’m trying to understand different states of RNA to develop a way to predict its behavior in a cell from its sequence. So if you give me an RNA sequence, I’m trying to develop a way to tell you what it’s going to do in the cell and what it’s going to do if the sequence is changed. This could be key for developing therapies or understanding how sequence changes might alter cellular behavior in disease, potentially influencing disease severity or progression.

My work combines computational modeling with wet lab experiments. In the lab, I introduce mutations into the RNA sequence and test how these RNA variants behave in cells. Then I use the experimental data to refine and improve the predictive model.

You’re also involved in science communication activities at Columbia. Why is that important to you?

Where I went to school, there were few resources to support science education, and I never really understood what research meant until I got to college.

The fellowship emphasizes inclusivity and science communication. One of the things I do outside the lab is called Girls’ Science Day. It’s a student-run program where we invite girls from low-income communities, with limited science programs and resources in their schools, to campus for a day filled with different hands-on experiments. Sometimes they extract DNA from a strawberry or make speakers to explore sound waves.

I love to talk to kids. I like to teach science to people with no background in science.

What’s the best thing about being a scientist?

I'll be honest. It's fun. When I started grad school, some people warned I’d be really tired and become burned out. But for me, it's like a hobby. I come home, and I want to look at my data. I want to see how it comes out. When I talk to my PI, he has to tell me: Don't get emotional about the data; if it doesn't work, it's OK. And I'm like, yeah, but you know, I want to try it again, and I want to keep doing it.