Olivia Brull, BSc
Olivia is a Research Technician at the University of Pittsburgh. She attended the University of Pittsburgh as an undergraduate in Biological Sciences and graduated in 2023.
Julie De Man, MSc
MSc in biomedical sciences and in bioinformatics.
Xianjun Dong, PhD
Xianjun Dong is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and the founding director of the Genomics and Bioinformatics Hub at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He received his Ph.D. degree in Bioinformatics at the University of Bergen (supervisor: Boris Lenhard). He has been the Director of Computational Neuroscience of the Precision Neurology Program (Director: Clemens Scherzer, MD) at Brigham and Women's Hospital since 2013, leading the Bioinformatics team working on neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson's disease. He is particularly interested in the non-coding RNAs (miRNA, eRNA, circRNA, etc.) and their functions in the brain. Dr. Dong is also awarded by the American Parkinson Disease Association (APDA), NIH (R01, U01, R41).
Jarne Geurts, BSc
Jarne is a lab technician in the lab of Thierry Voet.
Valentina Giunchiglia, MSc
Valentina is a PhD student in Artificial Intelligence for health at Imperial College London and Harvard University. She has a background in bioinformatics, data science and machine learning. Before starting her PhD, she worked as research assistant in the field of computational neuroscience, where she gained experience in working with different clinical and imaging data.
Jing He, PhD
Jing is a postdoc in University of Pittsburgh. He is working on neuron classification and targeting in non-human primate with the goal of bringing systems neuroscience into genetic considerations.
Zhandong Liu
Zhandong Liu is an associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine. His primary research interests are in Bioinformatics, Genomics and their application in PD.
Natalia Lopez Gonzalez del Rey, PhD
Nat is a Postdoctoral fellow in Awatramani´s lab. Her research has been focused on studying the factors underlying the selective nigrostriatal pathway vulnerability in Parkinson´s disease (PD). She has a background in PD models varying from rodents and non-human primates. During her PhD (HM-CINAC and Autonomous University, Madrid) she focused on assessing specific midbrain dopaminergic subtypes based on their molecular profile and their site of projection in a parkinsonian non-human primate model. She also participated in a project that aimed to investigate the use of alpaca-isolated nanobodies to target alpha synuclein in parkinsonian models (Austral University, Chile). Her knowledge in dopaminergic PD selective vulnerability is at the service of the lab´s state-of-the-art technology such as dopaminergic neuron-specific transgenic mouse lines and single nucleus multiomics techniques.
Alexandra Pančíková, MSc
Alexandra is a graduate student in the labs of Jonas Demeulemeester and Stein Aerts VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research and VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology. She holds a Masters degree in Bioinformatics and a Bachelors degree in Molecular Genetics
BaDoi Phan, BSc
My overall career goal is to apply computational and biologic research to investigate neuropsychiatric disorders. I have always been interested in applying computational approaches to investigating biological questions. In my undergraduate research, I applied bioinformatics and genomics approaches to investigate convergent gene pathways of neurodevelopmental disorders at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development. Now I am at the medical scientist training program (MSTP) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) where I collaborated experimental neuroscientists to apply systematic computation towards unbiased image quantification. My research efforts produced a first author publications at Nature Neuroscience and the Journal of Neuroscience and co-author of many other publications and preprints.
Sandy Pineda Gonzalez, PhD
I am a research focused academic working in the areas of Transcriptomics, Bioinformatics, Biochemistry and Genomics. My work at the University of Sydney focuses on understanding the underlying role of RNA function and dysregulation in neurodegenerative diseases, utilising a combination of human post-mortem brain-tissue and animal-models, coupled with long-read Nanoporesequencing and Single-cell RNAseq. Other interests include developing spatial-transcriptomics and utilising new methods/tools to better diagnose expansion-diseases, applying targeted-sequencing. I have established a research program combining molecular techniques with bioinformatics to study neurodegeneration and aim to build, a new sequencing-based multidisciplinary effort to search for treatments and cures for dementia.
Bing Ren, PhD
Dr. Bing Ren is Director of the Center for Epigenomics and Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He is also a Member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR). Dr. Ren obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Harvard University in 1998, and joined the faculty at LICR and UCSD in 2001, after completing postdoctoral training at the Whitehead Institute. Dr. Ren is studying how the non-coding sequences in the human genome direct spatiotemporal patterns of gene expression, how epigenetic mechanisms regulate their output during development, and how changes in these sequences contribute to human diseases. His lab has developed transformative tools for genome-wide analysis of enhancers and elucidated the chromatin features of these regulatory sequences. His pioneering work in epigenome analysis has laid the foundation for understanding how non-coding sequence variants contribute to complex traits and disease in humans.
Stefan Semrau
Prior to joining NYSCF Stefan was was a postdoctoral fellow with Alexander van Oudenaarden at MIT (systems biology) and Rudolf Jaenisch at the Whitehead Institutean and ran an independent research group as associate professor of physics at Leiden University. His work has focused on using single-cell techniques to study the mechanisms underlying cell fate decisions and the development of computational tools to interrogate single-cell and multiomics data.
Jannes Straub, MSc
Jannes is a PhD student in the Verstreken Lab at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research. Before joining Patrik's lab, he completed his bachelor's & master's studies in molecular biosciences with a focus on neuroscience at Heidelberg University in Germany. During that period, he also contributed to the ASAP efforts in Dirk Hockemeyer's lab within Team Rio in the context of a research internship.
Stephanie Strohbuecker, PhD
Stephanie obtained her PhD at the University of Nottingham, UK studying transcriptional regulation using mouse primary cell culture systems as a model. Subsequently she finished a MSc in Bioinformatics at the University of Leicester, UK whilst continuing as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham. After a three-year postdoc at the University of Trento, Italy, she joined the bioinformatics core facility at the Francis Crick Institute, London, UK.
Allen Wang, PhD
I am the Associate Director for the Center for Epigenomics at UCSD. As one of the Center’s leaders and principal scientists, I strive to collaborate with teams to apply our epigenomic technology platforms towards ambitious research goals. To accomplish this, I leverage my experience leading teams and integrating multiple disciplines such as developmental biology, stem cell engineering, epigenomics, and human genetics. For example, during my research career, I have leveraged epigenomic data to identify mechanisms for classic developmental processes and to uncover novel mechanisms for type 2 diabetes risk. In my current role, I use this expertise and experience to drive numerous active collaborative projects. These include projects focused on understanding human brain function using functional organoids, the molecular basis of human liver diseases such as NASH, and investigating lung cell-type diversity as part of LungMAP.
