Postdocs and Students

Chengran received his PhD in Human and Statistical Genetics at Washington University with Carlos Cruchaga.  Before joining back the lab as a postdoc, he worked as a Scientist in Statistical Genetics/Computational Biology at Biogen.

Yuanyuan (Daisy) Shen received her MD and become a fully licensed General Surgeon in China.  After she relocated to U.S., she worked as Clinical Research Fellow for two years at Yale University School of Medicine investigating the tumor biology and glucose metabolism.  Recently she received her Biomedical/Clinical Informatics PhD from the University of Missouri.  During her PhD, she worked on implementing machine learning exploratory methods on multi-omics Pan-cancer studies.

Dr. Muhammad Ali is a bioinformatician by training. He has joined the Cruchaga lab at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) as a postdoctoral research associate. His area of expertise is computational system biology, i.e. integrative analysis of multi-omics data from disease-related case-control studies, and network-based predictive disease modeling. In Cruchaga Lab, he is expanding his knowledge in the area of human genetics and performing genome-wide association studies (GWAS) analysis to identify novel and common genetic variants associated with neurodegenerative disorders. He aims at utilizing the multi-omics data from human brain tissues for identifying novel genes implicated in AD, to provide biological context for the risk genes and to identify novel molecular biomarkers and new therapeutic targets.

Maulik is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Cruchaga lab and manages GWAS, RNA-Seq and neuro imaging data. Maulik received his doctoral degree in Bioinformatics from Gujarat University and his Master degree in Bioinformatics from Sardar Patel University. Before joining the lab, he worked as a Project Scientist in Xcelris Genomics for 5 years and as Application Scientist in Bioinnovation for 2.5 years. He collaborated with various universities in the development of pipelines for the analysis of large-scale de-novo assembly, transcriptome, metagenomics and targeted exome data. He also worked on various functional and network analysis of high-throughput multi-omics and metabolomics data. Recently, he designed a 94-gene panel for Alzheimer’s disease patients with a diabetic condition to understand early detection and progression of the diseases.

Dan earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Genetics and Genomics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During his undergraduate education, he studied a mouse model of retinal degeneration, focusing on a deficiency of proteoglycans in the retina. Dan is utilizing multi-omic computational approaches to analyze sex-specific differences in Alzheimer disease diagnosis.

Ciyang received her Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During college, she worked on identifying the role of anticipatory UPR-triggered calcium in transcription regulation in ERα+ breast cancer utilizing approaches including ChIP. As a graduate student, she takes advantage of a comprehensive metabolomics dataset derived from brain tissues and uses metabolites as quantitative traits to decipher their roles in Alzheimer’s disease

Thomas is a PhD student in the Human and Statistical Genetics program at Washington University in St. Louis. He came to St. Louis from Montreal, Canada.  He completed a BA in Honours Psychology at Concordia University and a BSc in Honours Biology at McGill University.  He completed an undergraduate thesis during both his undergraduate experiences; he assessed the involvement of estrogen in heroin addiction in female rats in the laboratory of Dr. Uri Shalev at Concordia University, and he assessed the involvement of specific Zasp proteins in the flight of Drosophila melanogaster in the laboratory of Dr. Frieder Shoeck at McGill University.  He then completed an MSc in Human Genetics at McGill University in the laboratory of Dr. James Engert and Dr. George Thanassoulis.  During his MSc, he used haplotype analysis to better understand the genetic underpinnings of calcific aortic stenosis and other cardiovascular diseases.  His main interest is in using wet and dry lab techniques in tandem to uncover the genetic basis of neurological and psychological issues.

Joseph has a BS in Biology from Harris-Stowe State University in Mid-town St. Louis, MO. His Hobbies include gaming, music, and mixed martial arts. 

Bridget earned her Bachelor’s degree in Genetics and Genomics with a minor in Mathematics from the University of Utah. During her undergrad, she studied the genetics of eye color variation in the domestic pigeon using computational approaches such as QTL mapping and RNA-Seq.

Yueyao received her Bachelor’s degree in Statistics from University of California, Los Angeles in 2022. She is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Biostatistics and Data Science at Washington University in St. Louis and working as a Research Assistant in Cruchaga Lab. She enjoys listening to pop music, watching movies, and doing sports in her free time.