Dia joined the Cai lab as a post-doctoral researcher in August 2025 to work on plant synthetic genomics, artificial symbiont engineering, and genetic code expansion. She attended the University of Cambridge as an undergraduate where she performed research in Prof. Sir Tom Blundell’s group. Following this, she moved across the pond to Boston, working in Prof. Rick Blumberg’s lab at Harvard Medical School for a year, after which she began her doctoral studies at MIT in Prof. Mike Laub and Prof. Amy Keating’s labs. Here, she worked on protein evolution and engineering of bacterial signalling systems. In her free time, Dia enjoys long walks by the river, swimming, and trips to the spa.