Nir Hacohen
Nir is a faculty member at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Broad Institute and Harvard Medical School, and has long been interested in uncovering basic immunological principles and then learning how to apply these principles to treat human disease. He loves to read, cook, hike and explore the world with his family
Abraham Sonny
Abraham is a postdoctoral associate. He is a physician scientist interested in the host immune response in sepsis, and using mouse models to identify potential therapeutic targets. Abraham grew up in India and went to medical school at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi (India), and is currently a critical care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. Outside of the lab, Abraham enjoys the outdoors and recently learned sailing.
Alex Wong
Alex is a Postdoc in the Hacohen Lab, focusing on identifying key components that regulate immune responses against tumors. He recently completed his Ph.D. in Cancer Sciences at the University of Manchester, where he conducted his doctoral research at Dr Adam Hurlstone’s lab, studying tumor-intrinsic chronic interferon signaling and its role in promoting resistance to immunotherapy. Originally from Hong Kong, Alex completed his undergraduate degree in biotechnology at Hong Kong Baptist University. In his free time, he enjoys travelling, watching movies, cooking, and learning new things.
Amir Brivanlou
Amir is a graduate student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program at Harvard Medical School. He grew up in New York City and graduated from Kenyon College with a bachelor’s degree in biology. He trained with Silvi Rouskin as a technician at HMS, where he investigated the role of RNA secondary structures in viral life cycles and mitochondrial gene expression. He is broadly interested in understanding how the host mounts a balanced innate immune response. Outside of lab, Amir likes to make music, sit outdoors with friends, and be annoying about NYC vs Boston.
Apekshya Panda
Apekshya is a computational associate at the lab, interested in the application of integrated omics analysis and predictive modeling in understanding disease states and uncovering potential therapeutic targets. She is working with human patient data and mouse models to gain insights into mechanisms of response to checkpoint blockade therapy in various cancers. Born in India and raised in Minnesota, Apekshya has been a Cambridge resident for the last several years – during undergrad at MIT and later, while at the Broad. Outside of the lab, she can be found frequenting the Dance Complex in Central, seeking out the latest concerts at the Sinclair, or reading Jane Austen by the Esplanade.
Caroline Zielinski
Caroline graduated from Providence College with a bachelors of science in biology. During her time as an undergraduate, Caroline was a lab teaching assistant in both biology and chemistry labs and was a research assistant in a microbiology lab that studied predation efficiency of bdellivibrio predatory bacteria. Caroline spends her free time as a volunteer for the Crisis Textline, National Down Syndrome Society, and the United Multiple Sulfatase Deficiency Foundation and also enjoys spending time with her friends and two golden retrievers.
Claire Qu
Claire is a Research Associate in the Hacohen lab. She is originally from Houston, Texas and received her B.S. in Biology at Emory University in 2024. She is passionate about the inflammatory immune response. Outside the lab, Claire is an avid dancer, crocheter, and animal lover!
Daniel Rosen
Dan is a postdoc and Harvard radiation oncology resident. He grew up in Los Angeles and attended college at UC Berkeley. After a two year stint as a highschool science teacher with Teach for America, he moved to New York City for a MD/PhD at Weill Cornell/ The Rockefeller University. For his thesis he studied DNA repair in the context of antibody diversification. Missing the California sunshine, he overcorrected and went to Hawaii for his medical intern year, and then was pulled back to Boston for residency. His research focuses on engineering tumor-immune interactions and deciphering the tumor microenvironment. When not in the lab or the hospital, he enjoys outdoor adventures, finding new restaurants, and perhaps one-day, learning how to actually surf.
David Lieb
David is a computational biologist in the Hacohen Lab working on various scRNA-seq projects. He grew up in Carmichael, CA. In his free time, he enjoys spending time with his wife, dog, crossword puzzles and old sitcom reruns. Fun fact: David, his sister, both parents, all four grandparents, aunt, uncle, and all four first cousins were all born in the first half of the year. He received his M.S. in bioinformatics from Boston University.
Ghamdan (Gammy) Al-Eryani
Gammy is a postdoctoral researcher from Yemen/Australia who works across both the Hacohen Lab and the Methods Development Lab. He co-developed one of the first single-cell long-read sequencing approaches and led the immune ecotyping effort for the first single-cell and spatial breast cancer atlas. When not pacing aimlessly around or being a snob about coffee, Gammy works towards developing new same-cell multimodal methods in the hopes of improving our current understanding of the tumor microenvironment.
Izabella Zamora
Izabella is a Masters student at MIT studying computational biology, focusing on spatial sequencing data to understand tumor microenvironment changes in response to immunotherapy. She recently completed her degree in computer science and electrical engineering from MIT and is originally from southern California. Outside of academia, she enjoys swimming, baking, and traveling.
Isabella Salinas
Isabella is a research associate in the lab, interested in identifying therapeutic targets that can modify the immune regulation of tumors and analyzing how molecular factors influence response and resistance to immunotherapy. Always an East Coast resident, she grew up in Virginia but has lived in Cambridge and Boston for the past several years, where she recently graduated from MIT in Biological Engineering. Outside of the lab, she can be found dancing, exploring a new cafe in Boston, and celebrating her Mexican culture by cooking.
Jacy Fang
Jacy is a Research Technician in the Translational Cancer Immunology Lab. She received her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University in 2021. She enjoys reading, baking, and listening to music.
Jaechan Lee
Jaechan is a Research Associate in the Hacohen lab. He is from Bellingham, Washington and recently graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a B.S. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and a minor in Computational Medicine. Outside the lab, Jaechan enjoys playing the cello and playing tennis.
Jessika Baral
Jessika is an MD/PhD student in the Biomedical Informatics PhD program at Harvard Medical School. Prior to her training here, she studied Computational Biology at WashU and double minored in Computer Science and Mathematics. She’s broadly interested in all things computational immunology, especially cell circuits, CAR-T therapies, and protein engineering. Outside of lab, she loves to dance, read, and explore new cuisines/restaurants!
Julie Laffy
Julie is an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute, jointly advised by Nir Hacohen and Fei Chen. She completed her PhD at the Weizmann Institute under Itay Tirosh, where she developed and applied computational approaches to dissect tumour heterogeneity in brain cancer. Julie is interested in questions at the intersection of cancer and immunology, particularly where deep learning can be applied. She is also interested in how cells assemble and communicate and the extracellular cues that guide them. In her spare time, you’ll find Julie playing music (on the piano or on her DJ decks), reading historical fiction, or spending time in nature with loved ones. She grew up in London in a French/North-African household with lots of good food!
Kas Manakongtreecheep
Kas is a PhD student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) program at Harvard Medical School and a member of the Hacohen lab as well as Cathy Wu lab at Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Kas works to develop a suite of technologies to detect immunogenic cancer antigens and antigen-specific T cells, all for the purpose of improving targeted immunotherapies. Kas is from Thailand but have spent time working and studying in New Zealand, China, and Kenya. If not in lab, he can be found at the climbing gym or in the mountains of New Hampshire.
Liad Elmelech
Liad is a research associate in the Hacohen lab. He graduated from Cornell University with a BS in Biological Engineering. He is currently working on several projects to understand how the antitumor immune response is spatially organized, and how it is affected by therapies. His primary project involves building a perturbable in-vivo mouse model to study the mechanisms of the antitumor immune response. Outside the lab, Liad likes to hike, travel, and explore Boston.
Lynn Bi
Lynn is a current RA in the Hacohen Lab, where she studies tumor plasticity in pancreatic cancer. She’s originally from San Diego, CA, and graduated with a degree in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia. She enjoys ice skating, long runs and dogs.
Mohammed Mutaher
Mohammed is a research associate studying genetic regulators of CD8 T-cell differentiation in tumors. He graduated from Harvard College (‘22) with a bachelor’s degree in regenerative biology and a minor in global health. In the future, he hopes to study the intersection of cancer biology and immunology. He grew up in Clifton, NJ and considers Boston a home away from home. In his free time, Mohammed enjoys cooking and longboarding.
Nicholas Garaffo
Nick is a graduate student in the Hacohen Lab. He grew up in California and went to school at UC Davis to study Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Afterwards, he worked as a research assistant at UCSF with Dr. Dave Toczyski and studied culling-ring ligases and their role in apoptotic regulation and centrosome biology. He wants to characterize the genetic regulators for each module of the cGAS-STING pathway. Outside of lab, Nick likes to read non-science books, play chess (and lose), and go running.
Pauling Liu
Pauling is a postdoc in the lab and is originally from China. He works on computational approaches and analysis to understand tumor immunity. Outside of the lab, he likes hiking, skateboarding, and adventures.
Peyton Randolph
Peyton is a postdoc in the Hacohen lab applying precision genome editing to illuminate new biology and develop new therapies related to cancer immunology. He earned his Ph.D from Harvard in Prof. David Liu’s lab developing and improving prime editing as a novel genome editing technology. He grew up in Virginia just outside of Washington D.C. and received his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Virginia. Peyton enjoys cooking, climbing, and discovering new music/films in his free time.
Pierre Ankomah
Pierre is an Infectious Disease physician and postdoctoral research fellow. He is interested in host immune responses in infectious syndromes, and is using transcriptional analysis of immune cells at single-cell resolution to study the immunological heterogeneity underlying sepsis. He enjoys watching soccer and crate digging for vinyl records.
Raktima Raychowdhury
Raktima is a Research Associate in the Hacohen Lab. She is a proud mother and a nature lover. She received her PhD from the Chemistry-Bose Institute at the University of Calcutta in India.
Rumya Raghavan
Rumya is a Postdoc in the Hacohen Lab. She is extremely interested in the intersection between immunology and cancer and she looks forward to working on immunoengineering approaches to better understand and treat cancer. Rumya recently graduated from the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology PhD program and did her doctoral work in Feng Zhang’s group on engineering minimally immunogenic cargos and delivery modalities for gene therapy. Rumya grew up in a few different places (India, Canada, Washington State), but spent most of her time in Daytona Beach. She loves playing tennis, going on runs at odd hours, music, singing, board/card games, and learning new things!
Rollin Leavitt
Rollin is a Research Associate I in the Hacohen lab. With a bachelors in Biological Engineering from Cornell University, he is interested in interrogating and perturbing the genetic circuits involved in Lupus. Rollin grew up in south western Colorado, where he developed a love for rock climbing and hiking. He has carried this passion for nature with him, and outside of the lab you can find him exploring the many wild areas around the north east.
Sam Lee
Sam is the operations coordinator for the Hacohen Lab. She received her BS in nutrition from UMass Amherst. She has a variety of hobbies, but right now enjoys bird watching, playing with cats, and going to music festivals.
Sam Wright
Sam is a computational associate in the lab. He studied Statistics with a focus in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at Harvard. He was previously a Data Science Intern at HiFiBiO Therapeutics here in Cambridge working on projects related to cell-cell interactions and reference mapping for single-cell transcriptomics data curation. Sam is from the Central Valley in California and has been living in Cambridge for the past four years. Outside of work and school, he loves rock climbing, road biking and road tripping.
Sarah Kang
Sarah is a computational associate I in the lab. She graduated from the bioinformatics master’s program at the University of Michigan where she also received her BS in neuroscience. In her previous research experience, she analyzed a variety of single cell data, but mainly focused on biomarker discovery for prostate cancer. She’s currently interested in spatial methods for characterizing and understanding the tumor microenvironment and cell type interactions. In Sarah’s free time she likes cooking, reading, and printmaking.
Sarah San Vicente
Sarah is a research technician in the Translational Cancer Immunology Lab. She recently graduated with a B.S. in Molecular & Cell Biology and a minor in Psychological Sciences from the University of Connecticut. In her free time, she enjoys yoga, hiking, baking, and exploring new restaurants in Boston!
Tianyang Mao
Tianyang is a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab. He grew up in China
and graduated from Tsinghua University with a B.Sc. in Biology. He then moved to the
U.S. and completed his PhD degree in Immunology at Yale University. His thesis
focused on developing vaccine and antiviral strategies that enhance mucosal immunity
against respiratory viral infections. Before joining the Hacohen lab, he spent a year as a
postdoc at MIT on engineering cytokine pharmacokinetics for cancer immunotherapy.
His current research focuses on developing tools to better decode and reprogram
cytokine biology in the tumor microenvironment. In his free time, you can find him playing tennis and discovering new music.
Tim Zhu
Tim graduated from Boston University in May 2022 with a bachelors in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and with a Masters in Biotechnology. He is working on pMHC library display. He grew up in Torrance, California and has been in the Boston area since college. In his free time, he enjoys watching Disney movies, baking, and taking care of plants. Can you guess who his favorite Disney character is?
Tom Eisenhaure
Tom is a staff scientist in the Hacohen Lab.