Poy (Tossapol) Pholcharee

Poy joined the lab in the summer of 2021 as a D.Phil. student to continue the second half of his Ph.D. on the Skaggs-Oxford program between the University of Oxford and the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, graduating at the end of 2023. 

At the Scripps Research Institute, he worked with Prof. Ian Wilson and used X-ray crystallography to examine antibody responses against the circumsporozoite protein of P. falciparum, a major parasite that causes malaria in humans. Before his Ph.D. course, he graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine, USA with a B.A. degree in biology and mathematics. He also has experience working on the pathogenic fungus Candida albicans in the lab at Bowdoin. 

In Oxford, Poy focused on the PvDBP protein of Plasmodium vivax, playing important parts in our understanding of how PvDBP binds to its blood cell receptor, DARC and in characterising a novel PvDBP-based vaccine immunogen.

After graduation, Poy moved back to the US to start a postdoctoral position.