Graduates of the Program in Genetics
Year of entrance into the Program is indicated in parentheses. Dates at the end of entries indicate when current position was most recently confirmed.
Brinda Alagesan (2013)
Brinda joined Stony Brook's Medical Scientist Training Program in 2011 and the Genetics Program in 2013. Brinda performed her doctoral research under the guidance of David Tuveson at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. She defended her dissertation, entitled 'Oncogenic Kras induces Nix to promote pancreatic cancer' in April 2018, and then returned to her medical training. Brinda is currently a fellow in medical oncology/hematology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (7/26/23).
Emmanuel N. Asare (2009)
Emmanuel Asare is a Bronxite who earned his B.S. in Biology at Clarkson University. He pursued his doctoral work in Dr. Eckard Wimmer’s lab, where he studied the molecular biology of poliovirus. His doctoral work investigated the role of poliovirus 2C ATPase in viral morphogenesis and replication. Emmanuel received his doctorate in August 2015. Emmanuel continued at Stony Brook as a postdoctoral fellow and then moved to Albert Einstein College of Medicine as a research fellow (7/26/23).
Kimberly Bell (2010)
Kim earned her B.S. in Psychology with a minor in Biology from Stony Brook University in 2003. She received a M.S. in Neuroscience and Behavior from U Mass Amherst in 2006. She then worked as a technician at Cold Spring Harbor Lab for 4 years as part of the ENCODE and modENCODE projects. As a doctoral student, Kim worked on enhancer-promoter interactions mediated by the transcription factor Runt during Drosophila development in the Gergen lab. Kim also collaborated with Undergraduate Biology and The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science to use improvisation techniques to bolster TA-student communication in inquiry-based introductory labs. She received her PhD in December 2015, subsequently served as the Workshop Supervisor for the Alda Center, and is a Teaching Assistant Development Specialist in Stony Brook's Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (7/26/23).
Alex Bott (2012)
Alex carried out his dissertation work in the laboratory of Dr. Wei-Xing Zong and moved with Dr. Zong to Rutgers University. Alex's dissertation was entitled 'Glutamine synthetase in cancer cell metabolism and oncogenesis', and he graduated in August 2018. Alex is currently a postdoctoral fellow at University of Utah and the recipient of a prestigious National Cancer Institute F99/K00 Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Fellow Transition Award (7/26/23).
Rachel Caston
Kim earned her B.S. in Psychology with a
Frank Celeste
Kim earned her B.S. in Psychology with a
Sudipto Chakrabortty (2008)
Sudipto received a BE in biotechnology from Vishveshswaraiah Technological University,
Belgaum, India, in 2007. After entering the Graduate Program in Genetics, Sudipto
joined the laboratory of Tom Gingeras at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he studied
intercellular communication through exosome-mediated transfer of functional mRNA molecules.
Sudipto received his PhD in August 2015 and currently holds the position of Scientist
1 in Exosome Diagnostics in Cambridge, MA.
Derek Cheng
Kim earned her B.S. in Psychology with a
Ana Paula Delgado (2015)
Ana received her B.S. in Biology and a double minor in Chemistry and Bioinformatics from Nova Southeastern University in 2012. She also earned her Master's degree in Biological Sciences from Florida Atlantic University in 2014, where she applied bioinformatics approaches to discover novel druggable targets and diagnostic markers in cancer. She is currently an IMSD-MERGE scholar with an interest in cancer genomics, which she is pursuing in the lab of Scott Powers.
Miriam Fein (2010)
Miriam earned her B.A. degree in Biology from Queens College (CUNY) in 2003 and received her M.A. from Hunter College (CUNY) in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology in 2006. Miriam joined the Egeblad lab at Cold Spring Harbor laboratory in 2011, where studied tumor-host interactions that drive tumorigenesis and metastasis using intravital imaging in transgenic mice models. Miriam received her PhD in December 2016 and is now a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Betsy Barnes at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, NY.
Moises Guardado
Kim earned her B.S. in Psychology with a
Diana Guimet (2009)
Diana earned her B.S. in Biology at the University of San Diego. She pursued her doctoral work in Patrick Hearing’s lab, focusing on the adenovirus L4-22K protein. L4-22K serves as the master regulator for several aspects of adenovirus infection and may be a useful target for antiviral therapy and directed cancer gene therapy. Diana received her doctorate in December 2014 and is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Tariq Rana at UC San Diego.
Kelly earned her B.S. in Biology from Barry University in May 2015. As an undergrad, Kelly participated in a research project looking at the paternal role in fetal alcohol syndrome using zebrafish. She was also heavily involved in community service and in leadership development through her work as an e-board member of Sigma Alpha Phi. She is a Turner Fellow and is working in the lab of Chris Hammell studying the regulatory network surrounding developmental timing and how this is influenced by environmental factors.
Reuben Hoffmann (2011)
Reuben earned his B.S. in Genetics and Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He worked in Aaron Neiman's lab studying sporulation in the budding yeast S. cerevisiae. His focus was upon the gene SRT1, which encodes one of the two yeast cis-prenyltransferases and produces an aberrant sporulation phenotype when deleted. Under investigation was SRT1's relations to other genes and the mechanism by which it influences spore formation. Reuben was awarded his PhD in August 2017.
Chad Hogan (2016)
Chad received his B.S. in Biotechnology with a minor in Chemistry from Florida Gulf Coast University in 2016. With an interest in forensic biology, Chad's undergraduate research focused on the degradation and recovery of trace DNA evidence. He also interned at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Regional Crime Laboratory. Chad is pursuing his research on gammaherpesviruses, which are associated with human cancers, in the lab of Laurie Krug. Using a mouse gammaherpesvirus as a model organism, Chad's work aims to understand the roles of a host transcription factor, STAT3, in this infection.
Nuri Kim (2017)
Nuri received her B.A. in English and Molecular & Cell Biology with emphasis in Genetics, Genomics, and Development from UC Berkeley. Her prior research mainly involved ischemic stroke and traumatic brain injury in mice. As an MSTP student here at Stony Brook, she is currently working under the guidance of Jessica Seeliger.
Young Jin Kim
Kim earned her B.S. in Psychology with a
Brian Kinney
Kim earned her B.S. in Psychology with a
Michael Klingener
Kim earned her B.S. in Psychology with a
Abraham Kohrman
Kim earned her B.S. in Psychology with a
Erik Lavington (2009)
Erik is a graduate from the University of Kansas with a B.S. in biology with an emphasis in genetics. Erik worked in Walt Eanes' lab, where he studied the patterns of adaptation in Drosophila melanogaster core metabolic genes in populations from eastern North America and possible effects on several performance measures due to downregulated activity of glycolytic enzymes in experimental D.melanogaster lines. He received his doctorate in August 2015 and is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Rutgers Human Genetics Institute of New Jersey.
Meng Lin
Kim earned her B.S. in Psychology with a
Devon Lukow (2016)
Devon graduated from East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania with a degree in biotechnology in 2015. Devon is working in the Sheltzer Lab at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he studies the relationship between aneuploidy and cancer.
Fu Luo (2017)
Fu (Maze) received her B.S. in Biological Science from Sichuan University, China, in 2017 and studied at Columbia University and Oxford University as a visiting student in 2015 and 2016, respectively. She has a strong interest in cancer genomics and translational research and is currently pursuing her dissertation research in the lab of Dr. Flaminia Talos.
Taylor Medwig-Kinney (2016)
Taylor earned her B.S. in Biology and Health Science at Stony Brook University in 2016, concentrating in developmental genetics, public health, and community health education. She is currently a graduate student in the Matus laboratory, where she is studying the transcriptional and cell cycle control of invasive differentiation.
Sitapriya Moorthi (2011)
Sitapriya earned her Bachelors in Zoology (Honors) from Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi, India. While dissecting animals at school, she was passionately involved in trying to rescue them outside, being involved with several animal shelters. She was also a member of the debating society at her college. Sitapriya received her Masters in Genomics from Madurai Kamaraj University, India, where she discovered her interests in genetics and cancer research. At SBU she joined Dr. Chiara Luberto’s lab, where she worked on chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) and sphingomyelin synthase (SMS). Her research focused on understanding the transcriptional regulation of SMS through alternative promoters in CML. In 2014 she was selected for the Scholars in BioMedical Science program at SBU and hopes to translate her research into a more clinical setting. Sita was awarded her doctorate in August 2017.
Cara Moravec (2010)
Cara earned her B.S. in genetics at Iowa State University. At Stony Brook, she studied neural development in zebrafish in the Sirotkin lab. Her project examined how changes in gene expression and epigenetic modifications during development cause life-long effects on behavior. She also served as the Genetics senator in the Graduate Student Organization for three years. Cara is now continuing studies on early vertebrate development in the zebrafish model in the laboratory of Dr. Francisco Pelegri at University of Wisconsin - Madison.
Likes: Kayaking, camping, hiking, ballet, kneeboarding, paddleboarding, sailing, and reading
Kaustav Mukherjee (2009)
Kaustav earned a Master’s in Biotechnology from Madurai Kamaraj University in India. At Stony Brook, he worked in Dr. Janet Leatherwood’s lab where he studied post-transcriptional gene regulation in fission yeast (the other yeast – the one no one cares about but really should!). He was co-mentored by Dr. Bruce Futcher. Kaustav presented posters at the 2011 International Fission Yeast meeting in Boston, MA and the 2014 FASEB Yeast Chromosome Structure, Replication, and Segregation conference in Steamboat Springs, CO. He received his doctorate in December 2015. Kaus is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. James Bieker's lab at Mount Sinai Medical Center, where he is studying the regulation of erythropoiesis by the zinc finger transcription factor EKLF.
Mansa Munshi
Kim earned her B.S. in Psychology with a
Jamina Oomen-Hajagos (2010)
Jamina graduated from Yale with a B.S. in Organismal Biology (Intensive Research Track) and received a Master's in Biology from Stony Brook University. She carried out her doctoral work in Jerry Thomsen's lab, studying the effect of the PQBP1 protein on early neural development in Xenopus. Jamina also has a background in high school and community college teaching. Jamina received her PhD in May 2015 and subsequently earned a graduate degree in genetic counseling from Long Island University. She is now a cancer genetic counselor at the University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center in Albuquerque.
Jason O'Rawe (2013)
Jason received his B.A. and an M.A. in Biology from Stony Brook University. His master’s work focused on mathematical formulation of species interactions and community-level consequences of particular interaction schemes. Jason’s postgraduate work focused on developing software implementations of classical and contemporary statistical models for characterizing population level health-care data. As a doctoral student, Jason studied human genetic variation in the Lyon Lab and received his doctorate in August 2016. Jason currently leads a data science team at Jackson Lewis, a national law firm.
Likes: Programming, math, statistics, bioinformatics, video games, dreaming, and exploring
Christian Ruiz
Kim earned her B.S. in Psychology with a
Ioana Rus (2011)
Ioana earned a B.S. in Chemistry from UNC Chapel Hill in 2007 and a M.S. in Biomedical Science from Mount Sinai in 2009. Ioana subsequently joined the MSTP program at Stony Brook and was a student in Nicholas Tonks' lab, where she conducted structural and functional studies with conformation-sensing antibodies to PTP1B. Ioana received her PhD in May 2016 and has returned to medical school to complete her MD degree.
Jia Shen
Kim earned her B.S. in Psychology with a
Nitin Shirole (2011)
Nitin received his BS in Biotechnology, Microbiology, and Chemistry from Nagpur University, India in 2008. He also earned a Master's in Biological Sciences from the University of Alabama, Huntsville, in 2011, where he studied regulation of translation in E. coli. Nitin worked in Dr. Raffaella Sordella’s lab at CSHL, where his research focused on understanding the role of p53 isoforms in tumor initiation and progression. Additionally, Nitin performed a whole-genome RNAi screen to uncover novel driver genes in non-small cell lung cancer. Nitin earned his PhD in May 2017 and is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. William Kaelin at Dana Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School.
Zunaira Shuja (2009)
Zunaira earned her B.S. in Biology with a double major in History at Stony Brook University. She completed her dissertation work in the White lab, where she studied the functional effect of connexin mutations on various wild-type connexin proteins. Her doctoral work focused on how genetic alterations to these proteins result in epidermal disorders. Zunaira is now a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in the lab of Dr. Henry Colecraft. Her project is to study the gamma subunit's effect on Cav1.2 and Cav3.1, as well as to develop a high-throughput approach to discover new modulatory paradigms for Cav1 and Cav2 channels.
Jayson Smith
Kim earned her B.S. in Psychology with a
Gaurang Trivedi (2017)
Gaurang earned his Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy from Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, India, and Master’s degree in Pharmacology and Toxicology from Long Island University. As a technician with Dr. Lingbo Zhang at CSHL, Gaurang found a way to increase self-renewal capacity of erythroid progenitors to develop new treatments for bone marrow failure. His project received a feasibility award in 2016 from the NIH REACH and the Center for Biotechnology. Gaurang is now continuing in Dr. Zhang's lab for his dissertation research.
Yiyang Wu (2011)
Yiyang entered the Graduate Program in Genetics at Stony Brook in 2011, after receiving both her M.D. and M.S. degrees from China. She joined the Lyon lab in the summer of 2012. Yiyang’s dissertation research focused on investigating the mechanisms underlying Ogden syndrome, using patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models. Yiyang also worked on analyzing human genetic variation and its role in rare disorders. Yiyang received her degree in May 2017 and is now a Bioinformatics Research Scientist/Clinical Genome Analyst at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, TN.
Xiaoli Wu (2015)
Xiaoli (Sky) received her B.S. in Biology from Sichuan University in 2014 and studied at University of Washington as an exchange student in 2013. She took a year off and studied at Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology before joining the Genetics Program. Sky is now in the laboratory of Dr. Chris Vakoc at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Yiyang Wu
Jia-Ray received his B.S. from National Chiao Tung University in
Bobby Wysocki (2012)
Bobby earned his B.A. in Biochemistry/Molecular Biology at Hamilton College in 2007. He then worked at the Rockefeller University until 2010, when joined Stony Brook's Medical Scientist Training Program. In 2012, he began his dissertation work in the laboratory of Mikala Egeblad at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He studied the effect of neutrophils on breast cancer metastasis, as well as the importance of the tumor vasculature on the response of tumors to chemotherapies. Bobby received his PhD in May 2016 and is now completing his MD degree.
Likes: Clamming, BBQing, and the Simpsons (the old episodes)
Allen Yu
Jia-Ray received his B.S. from National Chiao Tung University in
Jia-Ray received his B.S. from National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. He conducted his doctoral research in Dr. Linda Van Aelst's lab at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Jia-Ray's dissertation research focused on the regulation of Rho family small GTPases during cancer metastasis. Jia-Ray received his PhD in May 2015 and is now a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Danny Reinberg at NYU School of Medicine.
John Yuen (2019)
John earned his BA in Biology from New York University in 2016. He did research in the lab of Dr. Matthew Rockman, also at NYU, focusing on the molecular and evolutionary mechanisms that shape heritable phenotypes in Caenorhabditis nematodes, before joining Stony Brook’s MSTP in 2017. John is currently working under the guidance of Dr. Jingfang Ju in the Department of Pathology on the role of microRNAs in the tumor microenvironment.
Andrew Ziesel (2017)
Andrew graduated summa cum laude from Binghamton University with a B.S in Biochemistry. As an undergraduate, he worked in Heather Fiumera's lab studying nuclear-mitochondrial genome interactions in S. cerevisiae. Andrew is currently a member of Nancy Hollingsworth's lab, where he uses S. cerevisiae to investigate the role of the meiotic recombination checkpoint in promoting viable gamete production.