Appointed fellows
Emily Lau (Department of Ecology &Evolution)
Education: PhD, UC Santa Barbara
Project: Molecular mechanisms underlying the evolution of bioluminescence in octocorals and brittle stars
Mentor: Joe Thornton
Pranav Vyas (Department of Molecular Genetics & Cell Biology)
Education: PhD, Stanford
Project: Warming-up the Heart: Dissecting How Climate-Change Challenges Canalization of Organ Morphogenesis
Mentor: Noah Mitchell
Seongsoo Kim (Department of Molecular Genetics & Cell Biology)
Education: PhD, Harvard
Project: Dynamic regulation of cell proliferation through mechanochemical feedback in epithelial colonies
Mentor: Margaret Gardel
Mariya Savinov (Department of Organismal Biology & Anatomy)
Education: PhD, New York University
Project: Adaptive collective dynamics in embryos and biofilms: a biophysical modeling approach
Mentor: Ed Munro and Jasmine Nirody
CHICAGO FELLOWS:
Aleksandar Radakovic (Department of Ecology &Evolution)
Education: PhD, Harvard University
Project: Reconstructing the evolution of the genetic code with ancestral aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase/tRNA pairs
Mentor: Joe Thornton and Arvind Murugan
Ethan Wold (Department of Molecular Genetics & Cell Biology)
Education: PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology
Project: Evolution of novel musculature and locomotor behavior in larval Diptera
Mentor: Ellie Heckscher and Urs Schmidt-Ott
Luella Allen-Waller (Department of Ecology & Evolution)
Education: PhD, University of Pennsylvania
Project: Deciphering endo-ectosymbiotic interactions in a changing ocean
Mentor: Cathy Pfister and Dakota McCoy
Ellen Lesser (Department of Molecular Genetics & Cell Biology)
Education: PhD, University of Washington
Project: Error correction in a developing nervous system
Mentor: Robert Carrillo and Ellie Heckscher
Carla Hoge (Department of Human Genetics)
Education: PhD, Columbia University
Project: Genetic connectivity on the Great Barrier Reef in the coral Acropora millepora
Mentor: John Novembre
DUCHOSSOIS FAMILY INSTITUTE (DFI) FELLOWS:
Sambhawa Priya (Department of Medicine)
Education: PhD, University of Minnesota
Project: Deep learning-based integration of electronic health records with gut microbiome data for predictive healthcare
Mentor: Ran Blekhman
CHICAGO FELLOWS:
Ondrej Maxian (Department of Molecular Genetics & Cell Biology)
Education: PhD, New York University
Project: Modeling how feedback between mechanics and biochemistry yields robust cell polarization
Mentor: Ed Munro
Elyse Parker (Department of Organismal Biology & Anatomy)
Education: PhD, Yale University
Project: The evolution of form and function in the skull of Antarctic notothenioid fishes
Mentor: Mark Westneat
Jingwen Si (Departments of Chemistry and Radiation & Cellular Oncology)
Education: PhD, Tsinghua University
Project: Modulating m6A regulators to improve CAR-NK-based therapies
Mentors: Chuan He, Ralph Weichselbaum
Matteo Fabbri (Department of Organismal Biology & Anatomy)
Education: PhD, Yale University
Project: Development, Function, and Morphological Integration of the Cranium at the Origin of Tetrapods
Mentor: Neil Shubin
Yuhang Fan (Department of Chemistry)
Education: PhD, Stanford University
Project: Spatial m6A sequencing
Mentor: Chuan He
Sarah Paramore (Departments of Molecular Genetics & Cell Biology and Organismal Biology & Anatomy)
Education: PhD, Princeton University
Project: Deciphering how directional cues are relayed into collective cell migration
Mentor: Sally Horne-Badovinac and Vicky Prince
DUCHOSSOIS FAMILY INSTITUTE (DFI) FELLOWS:
Bum-Joon Jung (Department of Medicine and Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering)
Education: PhD, Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST)
Project: Inertial Microfluidic Cell Smasher (iMCS): Development of a high throughput on-chip cell lysis platform
Mentors: Oni Basu, Supratik Guha
Natalia Cortes-Delgado (Department of Ecology & Evolution)
Education: PhD, University of Illinois at Chicago
Project: Implications of demographic characteristics for the composition and function of bat gut microbiome following virus infection
Mentor: Cara Brook
CHICAGO FELLOWS:
Francisco Henao Diaz (Department of Ecology & Evolution)
Education: PhD, The University of British Columbia
Project: The biogeography of extinction rates through time, untangling the effect of geographic range on extinction risk.
Mentor: Trevor Price
Bei Liu (Departments of Chemistry, and of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology)
Education: PhD, Duke University
Project: Transcriptome-wide mapping of snoRNA targets.
Mentors: Chuan He & Tao Pan
Román Ramos Báez (Departments of Ecology & Evolution, and of Human Genetics)
Education: PhD, University of Washington
Project: A response from scratch: inferring the evolutionary origins of the auxin signaling pathway.
Mentor: Joseph Thornton
Madeline Rollins (Departments of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, and of Molecular Genetics & Cell Biology)
Education: PhD, Northwestern University
Project: Structure and function of the multipass translocon in native membranes by electron cryotomography.
Mentors: Robert Keenan & Jotham Austin
Giacomo Valle (Department of Organismal Biology & Anatomy)
Education: PhD, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies Pisa
Project: A brain-computer interface that restores naturalistic touch sensations via microstimulation of somatosensory cortex.
Mentor: Sliman Bensmaia
DUCHOSSOIS FAMILY INSTITUTE (DFI) FELLOW:
Deepti Sharan (Department of Microbiology)
Education: PhD, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
Project: Identifying essential colonization factors for anti-inflammatory Clostridial members of the gut microbiota.
Mentors: Samuel Light
CHICAGO FELLOWS:
Shiri Kult (Department of Organismal Biology & Anatomy)
Education: PhD, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Project: Studying Respiratory System Regeneration Using Evolutionary and Developmental Approaches.
Mentor: Neil Shubin
Rachel Moran (Department of Ecology and Evolution)
Education: PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Project: Evolutionary Mechanisms Driving Species Discrimination.
Mentor: Marcus Kronforst
DUCHOSSOIS FAMILY INSTITUTE (DFI) FELLOW:
Helen A. Beilinson (Microbiology)
Education: PhD, Yale University
Project: Role of Innate and Adaptive Immune Mechanisms in Shaping Intestinal Microbiota.
Mentors: Tatyana Golovkina and Alexander Chervonsky
CHICAGO FELLOW:
Isabelle Stewart (Medicine)
Education: PhD, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Project: Germinal Center Blessing, the Antidote to Original Antigenic Sin.
Mentor: Patrick Wilson
DUCHOSSOIS FAMILY INSTITUTE (DFI) FELLOW:
Aliia Fatkhullina (Pathology)
Education: PhD, Fox Chase Cancer Center (Philadelphia, USA) /Kazan Federal University (Kazan, Russia)
Project: The Role of Lymph Node Macrophages in Sensing the Local Gut Milieu.
Mentor: Daria Esterházy
CHICAGO FELLOWS:
Meredith Doellman (Ecology and Evolution)
Education: PhD, University of Notre Dame
Project: Population and functional genomics of color pattern polymorphism in swallowtail butterflies.
Mentor: Marcus Kronforst
Mashaal Sohail (Human Genetics)
Education: PhD, Harvard University
Project: Harnessing local ancestry inference to characterize complex trait variation in admixed humans using large-scale genomic biobanks.
Mentor: John Novembre
DUCHOSSOIS FAMILY INSTITUTE (DFI) FELLOWS:
Raul Aguirre-Gamboa (Medicine)
Education: PhD, Harvard University
Project: Immuno-pharmacogenomics to understand and predict response to biologics in Crohn’s disease.
Mentor: Luis Barreiro
Pingping Zhu (Chemistry)
Education: PhD, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Project: m6A in Treg cells modulates the interaction of T-cells and microbiome to impact colitis.
Mentor: Chuan He
Tetsuto Miyashita (Organismal Biology and Anatomy)
Education: PhD, The University of Alberta, Canada
Project: Evolutionary assembly of the vertebrate body plan at the head-trunk interface
Mentor: Mike Coates
Kenneth Lattimer (Neurobiology)
Education: PhD, The University of Washington, U.S.A
Project: Neural dynamics of learning and decision making in nonhuman primates
Mentor: David Freedman
Seth Donoughe (Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology)
Education: PhD, Harvard University.
Project: How do cell movements affect the polarity of the cell
Mentor: Ed Monro and Sally Horne-Badovinac
Daniel P. Rice (Organismic and Evolutionary Biology)
Education: PhD, Harvard University, U.S.A
Project: Developing methods to distinguish among coalescent models and their application to population genomic data for a variety of species
Mentor: John Novembre
Huiqing Zhou (Structural Biology)
Education: PhD, Duke University U.S.A
Project: Occurrence and Regulation of N1 -methyladenosine in the Transcriptome
Mentor: Chuan He
Navid Bavi (Biophysics)
Education: PhD, The University of New South Wales, Australia.
Project: Molecular identification of mechanosensitive ion channels in proprioceptive neurons
Mentor: Eduardo Perozo
Simone Kristina Feurstein (Translational Stem Cell Biology)
Education: MD, PhD, University Hospital Hannover, Germany
Project: Mesenchymal stem cells with germline mutations in leukemia predisposing genes: Impact on the hematopoietic stem cell niche
Mentor: Lucy Godley
Georg Hochberg (Biophysics and Evolutionary Biology)
Education: PhD Pembroke College, Oxford University
Project:Evolution of oligomeric specificity in steroid hormone receptors
Mentor: Joe Thornton
Nitobe London (Cell Biology)
Education: PhD University of Washington
Project: Centralspindlin-mediated RhoA signaling in cytokinesis
Mentor: Michael Glotzer
Nicolaus Schmandt (Membrane Biophysics)
Education: PhD, Case Western Reserve University
Project: Discovery of the MT channel responsible for nematocytes function
Mentor: Eduardo Perozo
Lulu Hu (Structural Biology)
Education: PhD in Structural Biology from Fudan University
Project: Impact of 5hmC and potential demethylation on hematopoietic stem cell survival and proliferation in association with leukemogenesis
Mentors: Chuan He, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Chemistry and Lucy Godley, Department of Medicine
Yuko Kimura (Genetics)
Education: PhD in Chemistry and Biotechnology from the University of Tokyo
Project: Regulation of transcription factor binding dynamics
Mentor: Alex Ruthenburg, Department of Molecular Genetics & Cell Biology
Donglei Zhang (Molecular Biology)
Education: PhD in Genetics from Rutgers University
Project: Molecular mechanism of cytokinesis
Mentor: Michael Glotzer, Department of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology
Guillaume Lambert (Cell Biology)
Education: PhD in Physics from Princeton University
Project: Quantifying the robustness of circadian rhythms at the single-cell and single-molecule levels
Mentor: Michael Rust, Department of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology
Daniel Little (Neurobiology)
Education: PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology from University of California Berkeley
Project: Role of the thalamus in visual cortex function and interactions between different classes of glutamatergic input
Mentor: S. Murray Sherman, Department of Neurobiology
Claire Atkinson (Cell Biology)
Education: PhD in Cellular Biophysics from Rockefeller University
Project: Global analysis of the Bag6 interactome
Mentor: Robert Keenan and Tao Pan, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Daniel Matute (Evolutionary Genetics)
Education: PhD in Ecology and Evolution from the University of Chicago
Project: Genetics of Drosophila speciation
Mentor: Molly Przeworski, Departments of Human Genetics and Ecology and Evolution
Jackie Gavin-Smyth (Evolutionary Genetics)
Education: PhD in Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology from University of Chicago
Project: Divergence between Drosophila species in the genetic regulation and subsequent patterning of the early embryo
Mentor: Martin Kreitman and John Reinitz, Department of Ecology and Evolution
Dai Shizuka (Evolutionary Biology)
Education: PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of CA, Santa Cruz
Project: The evolution of learning and the process of speciation
Mentor: Trevor Price, Department of Ecology and Evolution
Jenny Tung (Evolutionary and Behavioral Genetics)
Education: PhD in Biology from Duke University
Project: Mechanisms underlying the effects of early-life environments on adult phenotypes
Mentor: Yoav Gilad, Department of Human Genetics
Marc Parisien (Systems Biology)
Education: PhD in Computer Science from the University of Montreal
Project: Systematic prediction and validation of protein-RNA interactome on the genomic scale
Mentors: Tobin Sosnick and Tao Pan, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Roger Pique-Regi (Computational Statistics, Genetics & Genomics)
Education: PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California
Project: Statistical methods for finding sequence features affecting gene expression
Mentor: Jonathan Pritchard, Department of Human Genetics
Huiping Liu (Cancer Stem Cell Biology)
Education: PhD in Biomedical Sciences (Pathology) from the University of Chicago
Postdoctoral Fellow in Cancer Stem Cell Biology at Stanford University
Project: Functions of microRNAs in metastatic breast tumor initiating cells
Mentors: Geoffrey Greene and Kay Macleod, Ben May Department for Cancer Research