Trainees


Cecilia Jane Andrews

Doctoral Student, Bintu Lab

Undergraduate: California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

Graduate research:  Studying Transcriptional Regulation. Concentrating on developmental biology and data science. Her research in the Bronner Lab examined the regulatory mechanisms inbvolved in cranial neural crest migration.

 

Olivia Jane Crocker

Doctoral Student

Undergraduate:  University of Pennsylvania

Graduate research:  Olivia has studied epigenetics plus both chromatin and small RNA biology during her undergrad research in the Joyce Lab. Olivia conducted additional research in the Conine Lab.

 

Danilo Dubocanin

Doctoral Student

Undergraduate: University of Washington

Graduate research: Working on understanding the (epi)genome. His thesis work generated the first in-depth comparative analysis of long-read assembly pipelines.

 

Simone Alma Evans

Doctoral Student   

Undergraduate: University of Washington 

Graduate research: Simone is fascinated by interacting players—immune cells, small molecules, symbionts—in microenvironments. Simone has been researching orchids with molecular and bioinformatic approaches at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center for the past five years. Intricate relationships between orchids and mycorrhizal fungi partners sparked her interest in subcellular protein pathways. After studying mismatch repair systems, she became interested in the interplay between cancer microenvironments and gene dysregulation. She is also an avid teacher and has enjoyed writing a biology resource for undergraduate students. 

 

Kristle Cruz Garcia

Doctoral Student

Undergraduate:  University of California, Berkeley

Kristle's past research includes studying post transcriptional regulatory programs in the context of cancer metastasis. She is currently narrowing down her graduate research interests which include cancer systems biology, functional genomics, and drug resistance. Outside the lab, Kristle is passionate about making science and higher education more accessible to underrepresented communities.

 

Austin Wolfgang Katzer

Doctoral Student

Undergraduate:  University of Colorado, Boulder

Graduate research:  Austin has an extensive background ranging from environmental toxicology to Evo-Devo research. His research interests include understanding the Establishment of twist Neural Crest Gene Regulatory Systems and Their Evolutionary Significance in Chordates.

 

Julian Perez

Doctoral Student

Undergraduate: Georgia Institute of Technology

Graduate research:  In the past, Julian has performed multimodal analysis on integrated single-cell RNA-seq and single-cell ATAC-seq data using the R package Seurat to study epigenetic changes in endothelial cells due to disturbed blood flow with respect to atherosclerosis development.

 

Angela Pogson

Doctoral Student, Brunet Lab

Undergraduate:  University of California, Berkeley

Graduate research:  Angela is interested in molecular and cellular age-related changes. She is currently a graduate student in the Brunet lab, where she studies proteostasis and protein aggregation in neural stem cells, a regenerative cell type in the brain. Her undergraduate work at UC Berkeley focused on the role of a ubiquitin ligase and protein quality control in muscle cell development. After graduation, she helped develop functional genomics screening platforms. 

 

Shahadat Rahman

Doctoral Student

Undergraduate:  The City College of New York

Graduate research:  

 

 

Arjun Rajan

Doctoral Student

Undergraduate:   University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Graduate Research: Arjun’s current research interests are in neural development and transcriptional control of gene expression. Arjun is interested in researching how transcriptional regulatory mechanisms influence cell differentiation during neurogenesis. Arjun’s fall rotation was in Seung Kim’s lab, and Arjun is currently rotating in Ryann Fame’s lab.