Abby Collins
Abby is a research associate working on pancreatic cancer cell-state plasticity. She went to James Madison University in Virginia, not too far from where she grew up in Northern VA. Outside of the lab, Abby enjoys dance and exploring the city!
Alina Simerzin
Alina is a research scientist in the Hacohen lab. Previously, she worked in the DepMap project at the Broad and worked on projects aimed at deepening our understanding of cancer vulnerabilities. Prior to that, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Galit Lahav’s laboratory within the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. There, she focused on studying how the spatiotemporal dynamics of p53 in single cells contribute to cell fate. She holds a B.Sc in Biotechnology and both an M.Sc and Ph.D in Human Genetics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. During her Ph.D, Alina investigated the molecular mechanisms underlying liver and cervical cancers, with a specific emphasis on microRNAs and the p53 pathway. Alina has a Labrador named Lilly, who has graduated from her initial training program and is now pursuing her higher education. She also enjoys outdoor activities such as hiking in challenging remote areas, skiing, and running.
Amrita Vetticaden
Amrita is from San Diego, CA and graduated from Yale with a B.S. in Molecular Biology. She is passionate about the intersection of cancer and immunology and hope to pursue an MD-PhD in the future, with a focus on oncology. Outside the lab, she is a huge animal lover. Amrita has a small dog named Maya, and she loves going on walks with her and teaching her new tricks. She also likes taking care of houseplants, listening to music, and trying out new restaurants!
Arnav Mehta
Arnav is a current postdoc and a GI oncology attending at MGH. He grew up in Hong Kong and Singapore before moving to Florida when he was 15. He attended college at Duke, and did his MD/PhD at UCLA/Caltech before moving to Boston for his residency and oncology fellowship. His research program is focused on studying GI tumor plasticity and immunology using single cell functional genomics, multiomics and spatial methods. Arnav loves to play soccer but no longer has any ACLs because of it!
Beck Holden
Beck is a postdoc developing new technologies for precise cell targeting. They earned their PhD in Chemistry at MIT, where they worked on peptide-based approaches for drug delivery and discovered an interest in cancer immunotherapy. Beck grew up in Texas and did their undergrad at Baylor. They started making candles recently and have been keeping a lab notebook to track fragrance oil compositions like any good chemist would.
Bingxu Liu
Bingxu is a PhD student working on understanding the language of natural biological systems and overcoming their theoretical limitations. He got a Biomedical Sciences degree from Zhejiang University in China. He was born in a small village in Henan Province, China and later moved to a bigger city when he was 7. Fun fact: He, as a rookie who just practiced half a year, matched with a national champion in his college taekwondo tournament final. Not giving up and fighting back is the worst decision he’s made in his life (He indeed scored once but pretty sure due to judges’ compassion).
Deepika Yeramosu
Deepika is a Computational Associate II primarily working on analyzing multiomic data from patients with pancreatic cancer. She recently graduated with a Masters in Computational Biology from Carnegie Mellon University. She’s from Philadelphia!
Esther Olajide
Oluwatomisin “Esther” Olajide graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County where she studied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. She is the secondborn in her family of five and Nigerian-American. Esther plans to obtain an MD/Ph.D. with cancer development and metastasis research concentration. Her hobbies and interests include reading, painting, and exploring new places.
Jonathan Chen
Jon is a postdoctoral fellow. He studies the ‘immunity hub’, a spatially organized multicellular network positively associated with favorable response to immunotherapy. Jon received his MD and PhD from Yale University. He completed a residency in anatomic pathology (MGH) and a fellowship in molecular genetic pathology (Harvard Medical School). He hails from Illinois and enjoys outdoor adventures with his family.
Matteo Gentili
Matteo is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Hacohen lab from Italy. He is interested in using unbiased systems approaches to identify regulatory mechanisms maintaining homeostasis of innate sensors. He used proximity ligation proteomics and CRISPR screens to study the cGAS/STING pathway, a pathway involved in anti-pathogen, anti-tumor and autoimmunity. Outside the lab, Matteo is into photography, plays bass, enjoys hiking and loves cooking Italian food. He received his PhD Immunology from the Institut Curie in France.
Milan Parikh
Milan is an Associate Computational Biologist II. He works on analysis of single cell and spatial transcriptomics data to understand radiation and immunotherapy induced changes in the tumor microenvironment. He graduated from Boston University and is originally from Michigan. He enjoys cooking and baking, and has a third degree black belt in mixed martial arts.
Quentin Hellier
Quentin is a Research Associate I working on the cGAS-STING pathway. He went to school in EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne) where he got a BSc and a MSc in Life Sciences Engineering, but he was born and raised in the south of France/Provence in a city called Arles (famous for its roman ruins, its international photography festival and because Van Gogh lived there). A fun fact about him is he used to play the harp.
Sisi Sarkizova
Sisi is a Staff scientist in the Hacohen Lab.
Stephen Li
Stephen is a Research Associate I. He is currently working on studying the cellular pathogenesis of lupus nephritis in mice and humans using single cell analysis and quantitative imaging. He grew up in Cary, North Carolina and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Outside of the lab, Stephen enjoys taking care of his houseplant collection, trying new recipes, and making music.
Xun Chen
Xun is a postdoctoral associate. Xun is passionate about developing solutions to lower the barriers to entry for new technologies in areas such as single cell sequencing and high-throughput antibody engineering. In his spare time, Xun enjoys listening to Cello and experimenting with diet engineering. Xun received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from University of Southern California.