Victoria Crans

My interest in scientific research began at a young age and was mainly inspired by my father and grandfather, who both worked as entomologists at Rutgers University. I spent a decent amount of my childhood wearing a lab coat and counting mosquito larvae to help my dad with his research. When it came time for me to go to college I knew I wanted to study biology and I decided to attend Rutgers, the place where my interest in science first began. During my undergraduate years I developed a specific interest in genetics. I joined Zhiyuan Shen’s lab at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey where I worked on constructing a multi-functional inducible knockdown vector. I graduated from Rutgers in 2018 with a B.A. in Genetics.

 After graduation I accepted a post-baccalaureate position as a research specialist in Sabine Petry’s lab at Princeton University, where I worked towards solving the crystal structure of a protein that is required for branching microtubule nucleation. In 2019 I became a graduate student here at Princeton, and in 2020 I joined the Jonikas Lab. Over the course of my Ph.D. I hope to further our understanding of the carbon concentrating mechanism of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and to help the lab get closer to its ultimate goal of reconstituting a pyrenoid in higher plants.

In my free time I enjoy reading, hiking, practicing yoga, playing sports, and working on jigsaw puzzles.