Biomedical Engineering

Dr. Neville Bethel trained as a computational biophysicist at UCSF working under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Grabe. For his doctoral work, he employed a combination of multi-scale mathematical modeling and fully atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to understand how TMEM16 proteins bend the membrane to initiate lipid flipping and ion permeation. Using this models, he found that TMEM16 twists the membrane to facilitate lipid flipping, and in the following years, these deformations were confirmed by cryogenic electron microscopy. While his doctoral work answered many questions regarding the relationship between lipid bilayers and resident proteins. I became more interested in answering questions at a broader scope. This influenced him to join David Baker’s lab at the University of Washington. Very little is understood about protein mechanical properties at the meso-scale, and he sought to generate protein systems that could be easily modified in a modular manner in order to systematically test how protein geometry and interfacial chemistry affect the assembly, stability, and mechanical properties of higher order protein crystals and asymmetric assemblies. With this in mind, Dr. Bethel generated a new family of extendable, cyclically symmetry proteins that could be used to address this question.

Dr. Elvisha Dhamala is a computational neuroscientist and the inaugural Kavli Institute for Neuroscience Postdoctoral Fellow for Academic Diversity in the Holmes Lab at Yale University. She is broadly interested studying sex differences in brain-behaviour relationships across healthy and clinical populations. She earned her BSc in Neuroscience in 2017 from McGill University, and her PhD in Neuroscience from Weill Cornell Medicine/Cornell University in 2021 in the Computational Connectomics Lab. Her research program is focused on characterizing the shared and unique neurobiological bases of human behavior in males and females across healthy and clinical populations. A core motivation driving this work is the search for sex-specific neural underpinnings of complex behaviors, which may underlie distinct manifestations of psychopathology in males and females. In pursuit of this goal, her research focuses on three complementary themes which aim to: (1) characterize sex differences in brain anatomy, structure, function, and behavioral traits, (2) quantify sex differences in neurobiological correlates of behavioral traits, and (3) develop brain-based predictive models to examine shared and unique neurobiological features underlying distinct psychopathology and psychiatric illnesses across the sexes.

Dr. Tahra Eissa is a postdoctoral research associate in computational neuroscience at University of Colorado Boulder. She completed her undergraduate degree in bioengineering at Cornell University and her PhD in neurobiology at University of Chicago where she studied the dynamics of seizures. Applying a diverse set of tools that combine theory with advanced data analytic techniques of human behavioral responses and human neural recordings, her current work focuses on the diversity of decision strategies that humans use to match our environment, the errors and limitations of our cognitive processes, and the corresponding brain mechanisms that underlie these behaviors. Her future research program is driven by an interest in the cognitive and neural mechanisms that allow for flexibility in our decision-making strategies. The long-term research goals are to study 1) the strategies humans apply to decision-making in different environments, 2) how these strategies are implemented by the brain, and 3) how neurological disorders disrupt behavior and brain processes.

Biomedical Sciences

Dr. Daysha Ferrer-Torres was born in Puerto Rico, where she completed her bachelor’s degree in science at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez. Her undergraduate research analyzed the genetic events that differentiate humans and primate lineages. In addition, she was part of a leading group creating a DNA Zoo: a biological tissue and DNA collection managed by the Puerto Rico Zoo. She undertook collaborative work at the National Cancer Institute with epidemiologist Dr. Cheryl Winkler. Her interest in translational and disease-related research led her to do cancer research by participating in the Cancer Research Summer Internship (CaRSIP) at the University of Michigan, where she chose to pursue her doctoral studies under Dr. David G Beer’s mentorship. She obtained a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology and currently works as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Jason Spence’s laboratory, where she’s been training in patient-derived organoids models and stem cell biology.

Dr. Shaogeng “Steven” Tang, Ph.D ’16 is a Damon Runyon postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Peter Kim ’79 in the Sarafan ChEM-H Institute and the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University. Steven received his B.S. at Peking University, and his Ph.D in Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology with Prof. Scott Emr at Cornell University. Steven is broadly interested in macromolecular machines for membrane fusion in human development and disease. Supported by an NIH Pathway to Independence Award, Steven investigates arguably the most important cell-cell fusion event in life, mammalian fertilization. Specifically, he studies how sperm and eggs bind and fuse at the levels of cell biology, mechanistic biochemistry, and structural biology. Steven’s long-term goal is to translate this knowledge into therapeutic opportunities for improving human fertility and reproductive health. Through Steven’s experiences, he sees great teaching and mentoring as a highly individual and tailored process. Steven is acutely aware of the rich diversity of individuals and how it enriches our world.

Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Dr. Adrian Jinich was born and raised in Mexico City, Mexico. He studied Physics as an undergrad, then did a masters in applied math in Guanajuato, Mexico. He also worked as a lab technician in a yeast genetics lab for a couple years. Then, Dr. Jinich got his PhD at Harvard systems biology, doing quantum chemistry to analyze the thermodynamics of metabolic redox reactions. He now lives with his wife and two kids (ages 3 and 6) in New York City. He is a postdoc and HHMI Hanna Gray Fellow at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Jinich works in the lab of Kyu Rhee, and they study the metabolism of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a bacteria that kills around 1.5 million people every year. He focuses on trying to discover the function of unannotated enzymes using computation and experiments: machine learning, systems biochemistry, and functional genetics. Outside the lab, he likes learning about insects and other animals with my kids.

Dr. Xiaotang Lu is a Postdoctoral Fellow working with Prof. Jeff Lichtman at Harvard University. Her research interest pivots around developing new tools to illustrate nanostructures. In her graduate research supervised by Prof. Brain Korgel at the University of Texas at Austin, she focused on synthesizing nanomaterials for high-capacity lithium-ion batteries and developing in-situ electron microscopy to study the change of anode materials upon charging and discharging. For the postdoc study, she works on connectomics, attempting to unravel the complexity of the brain with electron microscopy. As a developing field of neuroscience, connectomics demands new technologies to advance. She now focuses on developing methods to scale up volumetric electron microscopy and extracting multiplexed information from brain tissues. Her work has resulted in the invention of ODeCO, a whole brain staining method, and NATIVE, a widely applicable immunostaining approach for correlated light and electron microscopy. She enjoys doing interdisciplinary research and working with people from different backgrounds. For her future research, she will keep on solving bottleneck problems for brain studies and establishing new paradigms for multimodal imaging.

Dr. Lisa Volpatti is an AHA Postdoctoral Fellow in the Hubbell Lab at the University of Chicago, where she engineers proteins to reduce vascular inflammation or increase tumor immunogenicity. Her future lab will focus on engineering targeted protein therapeutics for applications in immune and metabolic diseases. She completed her PhD in chemical engineering at MIT in the laboratories of Bob Langer and Dan Anderson on an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, where her thesis focused on developing glucose-responsive insulin delivery systems. Prior to MIT, she earned a research-based master’s degree (MPhil) in chemistry at the University of Cambridge, UK which was fully funded by a Whitaker International Fellowship.

Department of Entomology

Dr. Budhaditya Chowdhury’s research interests encompass genetic and neurobiological understanding of systems-level behavior. His current research is focused on understanding restorative sleep structure in Drosophila, its neurophysiological correlates, and the manifestations of its deficiencies. By identifying molecular features of such homeostatic dysregulation, his broader interest is to assess how acute and chronic restorative sleep pressures modulate behavioral landscapes. Budha obtained his Master’s degree in Zoology from Visva-Bharati University, India. The Indian Academy of Sciences fellowship funded his thesis on metapopulation dynamic modeling in Drosophila in the lab of Dr. Amitabh Joshi at Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research. His Ph.D. work was at the J.P. Scott Center at Bowling Green State University under the tutelage of Dr. Robert Huber and Dr. Moira van Staaden. Here, he established quantitative behavioral methods to study large-scale open-field animal movement using GPS data loggers and computational analysis tools. As a postdoc in the lab of Prof. Edward A. Kravitz at the Neurobiology Department at Harvard Medical School, he identified critical developmental windows and a transmembrane transporter that modulates social behavior in Drosophila. Budha is currently in the lab of Prof. Orie Shafer at the Advanced Science Research Center-City University of New York. As a first-generation immigrant scientist from India, he cares deeply about representation, rights, and responsibilities. Outside the lab, he can be found in tennis courts, independent bookstores, and art museums.

Dr. Mabel Taracena is a postdoctoral associate in the Entomology Department at Cornell University and a guest researcher at the Center of Health Studies from the Del Valle de Guatemala University. She obtained her doctorate and master’s degrees from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and did her undergraduate studies at Del Valle de Guatemala University. Dr. Taracena works in the field of vector biology, in particular tropical and neglected tropical diseases. Currently, her research focuses on understanding how the mosquito midgut works at a cellular level and how the gut micro-environment defines and regulates infection, particularly in the context of disease transmission. Her goal is to identify key aspects of vector physiology to be able to design new vector control strategies that are efficient and sustainable, to prevent disease transmission. Before coming to Cornell, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow in an Open Philanthropy project at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to use RNA interference for mosquito elimination. She has always enjoyed mentoring students and doing inter-institutional and multi-disciplinary collaborative projects. She is an active member of the Guatemalan chapter of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World, where she seeks to promote women’s engagement in STEM and STEM-related careers. Dr. Taracena is driven by the hope of creating a more inclusive and equitable research system worldwide, closing the gaps in research capacity and resources in the Global South, particularly Latin America.

Dr. Kishana Taylor is currently a Cornell Rising Star, former HHMI Inclusive Excellence Teaching Fellow and postdoc at Rutgers University – Newark, where she studies the pandemic potential of arthropod-borne viruses via experimental evolution, disease ecology and molecular epidemiology. Her broader research interests include: emerging zoonotic viruses and how, and to whom, they spread post emergence; pandemic preparedness, and systemic inequalities exacerbated by infectious diseases. Dr. Taylor earned a B.S. in Animal Science and M.S. in Public Health Microbiology and Emerging Infectious Diseases prior to earning her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Biomedical Sciences from The University of Georgia. Dr. Kishana Taylor is the President and Co-founder of the Black Microbiologists Association (and Black in Microbiology). She is also interested in effective ways to improve science literacy in and communicating science to the general public and has shared the importance of virology and broader science literacy to many different audiences ranging from high school and college students to fiction writers to everyday citizens concerned about COVID-19 vaccinations. Dr. Taylor is passionate about improving the outlook for scientists from historically excluded groups through tangible solutions to removing systemic barriers in all but, especially academic spaces. She works to promote equity in STEM centers both racial justice and the facilitation of better environments for students and postdocs.

Division of Nutritional Sciences

Dr. Valerie Darcey, Ph.D., M.S., R.D., a NIDDK Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Dr. Kevin Hall’s lab in the Laboratory of Biological Modeling. Dr. Darcey received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in Biological Basis of Behavior, her M.S. in Nutrition from Drexel University, and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Georgetown University. She is also a Registered Dietitian and completed her dietetics training at the NIH Clinical Center. As a Registered Dietitian, Dr. Darcey works with patients in outpatient programs for drug and alcohol use recovery, providing evidenced-based nutrition counseling in group settings. As a neuroscientist, her research focuses on how diet can impact the strength of our impulses and habits by influencing brain function and neurochemistry. Her postdoctoral work with Dr. Hall examines the relationships between diet and body weight with eating behavior and dopamine system function in humans. Ultimately, Dr. Darcey hopes to develop neuroscience-based nutritional approaches that enhance adherence to behavioral interventions (e.g., weight management, smoking cessation, drug and alcohol recovery). Dr. Darcey is the recipient of a competitive NIH K99 Transition Award that supports the career transition from postdoctoral fellow to independent researcher. She was a participant at the 64th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting on Physiology or Medicine and was recognized in 2020 by Cell Mentor/Cell Press as a Rising Star, “1000 Inspiring Black Scientists in America”. She is a founding member of the NIDDK Trainees Recognizing Excellence and Diversity in Science (TREaDS) steering committee that was awarded the William G. Coleman Jr. Award for Diversity & Inclusion in 2021. And most recently has been awarded one of two 2022 Rising Stars in Neuroscience Awards from the Grass Foundation.

Dr. Leah Guthrie is a Hanna H. Gray Fellow in the Sonnenburg lab at Stanford University. Dr. Guthrie completed her doctoral work at Albert Einstein College of Medicine under the mentorship of Dr. Libusha Kelly, where she used a combination of mass spectrometry, metagenomics, and chemoinformatics approaches to understand how bacterial enzymes influence drug metabolism and toxicity. This work propelled her interest in the vast realm of undefined bacterial enzymatic reactions and products with poorly defined impact on human biology. As a postdoc in Justin Sonnenburg’s lab, she investigates the modes of production, functionality, and factors underlining interpersonal variability in diet-derived bacterial metabolites that are associated with adverse health outcomes. Moving forward, Leah is interested in establishing a research group focused on biochemical and genetic determinants of personalized bacterial metabolite profiles and how these products modulate human cell signaling to influence disease processes. Leah is an advocate for inclusive diversity and equity in academia. She is especially inspired by potential discoveries made by a diverse scientific community in regard to the role of gut microbes in improving human nutrition and cardio-renal diseases.

Dr. Ana Valencia received a doctorate in Kinesiology and Exercise Physiology in 2017 from the University of Maryland. She subsequently accepted a postdoctoral fellowship position at the University of Washington, Seattle WA in the laboratory of Dr. David Marcinek within the Department of Radiology. Dr. Valencia studies the effects of nutritional stress on mitochondrial function and metabolism.

Dr. Helene Vilme is a social scientist with academic training in public health promotion and education. She has expertise in community-based participatory research, qualitative and quantitative research methods, implementation science, and program evaluation. Her research focuses on developing and implementing population-level interventions to address multilevel factors that contribute to inequities in food access, dietary choices, and health outcomes, particularly among minoritized populations.

Human Centered Design

Dr. Garumma Feyissa (PhD, MPH) holds PhD in in Public Health (with focus on Evidence-based Healthcare) from the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) at the University of Adelaide. Garumma has been working as postdoc doctoral research fellow at Drexel University. Before he moved to USA, he has been working as a faculty member of Jimma University. Dr. Feyissa is passionate about expanding evidence-based policy and practice in health and social care through evidence-based research and teaching. Garumma has extensive research experience and skills which he gained through conducting research on diverse clinical and public heath areas including maternal and child health, Nutrition, mental health, HIV, and sexual and reproductive health among others. Dr. Feyissa brings skills of diverse research methodologies ranging from primary quantitative and qualitative research to systematic reviews and methods that involve best practice implementation, guideline development and evaluation, and contextualization of global evidence to local settings. Equipped with both qualitative and quantitative research methods, Garumma aims to conduct both primary research and systematic reviews to generate and synthesize evidence that guides public health policies and practice. As JBI trainer, Garumma has been mentoring and training researchers based at different research institutions on different types of systematic reviews.

Dr. Emily Helminen is a doctoral candidate in school psychology at Syracuse University and is currently completing a predoctoral internship in behavioral health and clinical psychology at Rochester Institute of Technology. Emily received a B.S. in biomedical engineering from Michigan Technological University and an M.S. in psychology from Syracuse University. Broadly, Emily’s research focuses on improving the mental and behavioral health of minoritized and underserved populations, with a focus on sexual and gender minority (SGM) people. They use mixed-methods approaches which are grounded in minority stress theory, social safety theory, and intersectionality.

Emily’s current research projects include developing and implementing compassion-based contemplative interventions which target transdiagnostic physiological (e.g., stress reactivity) and psychological (e.g., internalized stigma) mechanisms underlying widespread mental (e.g., posttraumatic stress symptoms) and behavioral (e.g., hazardous substance use) health concerns among SGM people. In addition to developing individual-level compassion-based interventions, Emily has emerging lines of research dedicated to understanding multilevel stigma-related stressors among SGM people, including interpersonal (e.g., stigma from healthcare providers), organizational (e.g., workplace stigma), and structural stressors (e.g., societal stigma), with the goal of developing multilevel compassion-based interventions to prevent such stressors and promote flourishing and health equity among SGM people.

Dr. Vanessa Sanchez is a fashion-designer-turned-engineer working to make our clothing smarter through materials science. She attended The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) for fashion design and later graduated with a BS from the Fiber Science program at Cornell University. Her unique background enables her to understand garments fully from the underlying materials, to the textile structure, and finally to the full wearable system in order to create assistive and augmentative garments. Specifically, she develops robotic textiles made from active hierarchical materials that sense the wearer and surrounding environment and respond accordingly. She currently conducts research on supramolecular shape memory polymer fibers for use in robotic textiles as an NSF MPS-Ascend Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Zhenan Bao’s group in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. She completed her PhD on textiles as the basis for integrated soft robotics at Harvard University in Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering as part of the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory. Her PhD was supported by the DoD NDSEG Fellowship and the GEM Fellowship, and her resulting work has been featured in Vice, Wired, and Engadget. She has been recognized by Forbes 30 under 30, 50 Women in Robotics You Need to Know, and as an ACS CAS Future Leader.

Microbiology

Dr. Leonor García-Bayona grew up in Bogota, Colombia and completed her Chemical Engineering and Microbiology undergraduate studies at the University of the Andes in Colombia. Her doctoral work was performed under the supervision of Michael Laub at MIT, where she acquired a strong background in bacterial genetics, physiology, genomics, and microscopy. As a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Laurie Comstock (first at BWH and Harvard, later at the University of Chicago), Leonor has studied different aspects of interbacterial interactions in the human intestinal microbiota. She created tools to genetically manipulate wild Bacteroidales strains regardless of antibiotic resistance and developed methods to visualize active cellular processes in these bacteria. Her current work focuses on the genetics and ecology of intestinal biofilms encoded by a mobile genetic element. Her future lab will study how horizontal gene transfer shapes interactions in the human intestinal microbiota and what the implications of this widespread phenomenon are for the evolution of community properties relevant to human health. Leonor’s desire to become faculty stems not only from wanting to address these tantalizing questions in microbial genetics and evolution, but also from a pressing need to use her life experiences to be a force for justice, equity, inclusion, and diversity in science. She has been involved in various initiatives, most notably as a mentor, strategic partnership coordinator and now executive board member for Cientifico Latino. Her research is funded by an NIAID K99/R00 award and she is currently applying for faculty positions.

Dr. Lisa-Marie Nisbett is a biochemist, originally from St. Kitts and Nevis. She received both her B.S and M.S in Biology from the LIU Post Campus of Long Island University in 2009 and 2012 respectively. She then completed a Ph.D in Biochemistry and Structural Biology from Stony Brook University in 2018 under the mentorship of Dr. Elizabeth Boon. Her dissertation work focused on the biochemical characterization of a novel nitric oxide-sensing domain, NosP, in two bacterial systems. Through this work, she established the involvement of NosP in cyclic-di-GMP signaling pathways and biofilm formation in Shewanella oneidensis and Burkholderia thailandensis. Currently, Dr. Nisbett is a NIH IRACDA NY-CAPS Postdoctoral Scholar in the laboratory of Dr. Jessica Seeliger at Stony Brook University. Her research is focused on probing the functional relationship between cell envelope biogenesis and lipid export pathways in mycobacteria. Specifically, Dr. Nisbett is working to elucidate the role of the lipoprotein LprG in transporting lipids to the exterior layer of mycobacteria, known as the mycomembrane, which functions as a well armored, critical barrier that protects mycobacteria from various assaults such as antibiotics. Dr. Nisbett’s goal is to become an independent academic researcher who investigates clinically relevant, understudied pathogenic bacteria. Specifically, she is interested in developing a comprehensive understanding of the molecular basis of bacterial pathogenesis by characterizing bacterial signaling pathways that are implicated in pathogenesis.

Dr. Thiago Monteiro Araujo dos Santos (First name is pronounced: chee-AH-go) (Pronoun: he) grew up in a small city in Southeast Brazil. He received his B.Sc. from the Universidade Federal de Viçosa (Brazil) and  Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied cell division and intracellular organization in bacteria. Dr. Santos is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, and is investigating the biogenesis of transmembrane proteins in the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria. When he is not working or volunteering at local museums and science festivals, he likes to read books, watch documentaries, go to concerts, and ferment things (including foods and beverages!).

Microbiology & Immunology 

Dr. Novalia (Nova) Pishesha, originally from Indonesia, studied at the City College of San Francisco before transferring to the University of California at Berkeley. She finished her B.S. in Bioengineering in 2011 and was awarded the Departmental Citation. Nova went on to pursue a PhD in Biological Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which she completed in 2018. Her thesis focused on utilizing engineered RBCs to treat autoimmune diseases and hyperlipidemia, as well as biodefense against lethal bioweapon. This engineered RBC technology was part of the foundational technology of Rubius Therapeutics, a publicly traded company that aims to bring these engineered RBCs to the clinic. Upon graduation, she was elected a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and has been carrying out her research at the Boston Children’s Hospital, the Broad Institute, and the Koch Institute. She has been formulating alpaca-derived single domain antibody fragment (nanobody)-based platform to create novel therapeutics for immune modulation, i.e. treatment of various autoimmune diseases and vaccine applications. She recently co-founded a biotech company, Cerberus Therapeutics, based on this technology. She is also a member of 2021 MIT Technology Review (TR) Innovators under 35 Asia Pacific and 2021 The Boston Globe’s STAT+ Wunderkinds.

Dr. Julia Port is a Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow at Rocky Mountain Labs, Hamilton, Montana. She joined NIAID’s Laboratory of Virology in February 2020 to investigate host and reservoir immune responses to highly-pathogenic zoonotic viruses in the group of Vincent Munster. She is interested in transmission immunology: How transmission routes shape immunity and how immunity, in turn, shapes transmission efficiency and virus evolution. She has recently focused on airborne, specifically aerosol, transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the impact on disease manifestation, and variant competitiveness in a changing immune landscape. Originally from Germany, Julia obtained her PhD in December 2019 from the University of Lübeck, Germany, and performed her doctoral research project at the Bernhard-Nocht-Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany, investigating the implications of T-lymphocyte homing on Lassa fever pathogenesis and transmission. Previously, she obtained a master’s degree in Biomedical Sciences (Infectious and Tropical Diseases) from the University of Antwerp, Belgium, working on immunotherapy for HIV. Julia completed her undergraduate studies in Molecular Medicine at the University Tübingen, Germany, and conducted research on the T-cell responses during HIV/TB co-infections at the University Cape Town, South Africa. In her free time, she enjoys baking, hiking, bouldering, kendo, and street art. She also loves travelling and trying out new food, especially street food, baked goods, and desserts.

Dr. Christine Vazquez was born and raised in New Jersey and am proud to come from a Puerto Rican family. She completed her Bachelors of Science in Molecular and Cellular Biology and her Masters of Science in Biotechnology with a concentration in Biodefense at Johns Hopkins University. After some time as a research technician at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Dr. Valeria Culotta’s lab, Dr. Vazquez started grad school at Duke University. She joined Dr. Stacy Horner’s lab in the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics department for my thesis. Her thesis research examined how the hepatitis C virus protease complex, NS3-4A, modulates antiviral immune signaling. Dr. Vazquez identified an amino acid residue in the NS4A protein that regulates a previously uncharacterized signaling pathway. Since January 2020, she has been a Provost Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Kellie Jurado’s lab at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, where she studies how the emerging respiratory virus EV-D68 antagonizes innate immune pathways to lead to a rare polio-like paralysis called acute flaccid myelitis. For Dr. Vazquez’s future lab’s research, She is excited to continue uncovering EV-D68-host immune interactions as well as further explore immune antagonism strategies of other emerging viruses within our central nervous system.

Molecular Biology & Genetics

Dr. María Angélica Bravo Núñez is a HHMI Hanna H. Gray Fellow and a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. She currently works in the lab of Dr. Andrew Murray in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Department. She received her PhD in Biology from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research and a BS in Genomic Sciences from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Her goal is to create a research program that unites her background in genome instability with her interest in the evolution of chromosome segregation to understand the molecular mechanisms of normal and abnormal chromosome segregation. Her research will expand the understanding of the causes of chromosome segregation errors and the role of aneuploidy in cancer and antifungal drug resistance.

Dr. Zeribe Nwosu obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, where he studied metabolic alterations in liver cancer. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the labs of Dr. Costas Lyssiotis and Prof. Marina Pasca di Magliano at the University of Michigan. Dr. Nwosu’s current research is on metabolic alterations that drive pancreatic cancer, the role of cells in the tumor microenvironment and potential opportunities for pancreatic cancer treatment.