Scientists

Arda has a Master degree in Molecular Biology, Genetics and Bioengineering from Sabanci University. Even though his major is in Genetics, he is highly interested in Bioinformatics and has been thriving to improve in this field, for more than 3 years. Arda has experience in both academia and the private sector. In academia, he was a member of Adebali Lab, during his Master’s, working on unveiling the effect of histone markers on the Nucleotide Excision Repair (NER) mechanism. He worked on different sequencing techniques such as DNA-seq, Damage-seq, XR-seq, ChIP-seq, and the DNase-seq. Later, in the private sector, he worked for RTA Laboratories where he was responsible for designing WES/somatic germline pipelines for cancer diagnosis, writing commercial use only algorithms for SNP and INDEL detection, and contributing to the development of some in-house bioinformatics software’s.  Currently, Arda is working in the Cruchaga Lab to preprocess and analyze WES and WGS data.

Devin works as a Bioinformaticist in the Cruchaga lab. He received both his MS in Genome Bioinformatics and BS in Bioinformatics from the University of Pittsburgh. His former experiences include work in computational cancer research and organic chemistry labs. He enjoys video games, movies, and sports in his free time.

Dr. Do works as a Research Statistician in the Cruchaga Lab from early 2022.  She was trained as a genetic epidemiologist at the University of Alabama in Birmingham to work on different genomic data including GWAS consortia, exome chip, exome sequence in multi ancestries and family-based studies using various statistical methods.  She actively worked in pharmacogenomics and epigenetics projects in the CHARGE consortium as well as identified risk locus associated cardiovascular-related outcomes. During her postdoctoral training at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, she expanded the genomics skillsets by emphasizing on integrating mutli-omic data. She led and collaborated in the development of pipelines for the analysis of large-scale epigenome-, transcriptome-wide, microbiome, and metabolome datasets.  She contributed to projects on identifying novel genes associated with reaction severity among peanut allergic children by integrating transcriptome-wide and epigenome datasets, as well as assessing key drivers of asthma using probabilistic causal networks.

Priyanka is a Bioinformatics Research analyst in the Cruchaga lab and she manages GWAS and WGS data.
She received her second Masters degree in Bioinformatics from Indiana University after her first Masters degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from JSS University, India. She has fours years of experience in an academic setting before shifting her career towards research with a focus on genomics. Before joining the lab she worked on integrative analysis of high-throughput multi-omics and neuroimaging data to better understand neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's. Her previous research includes exploring genotype-phenotype associations using bioinformatic approaches to reveal novel biomarkers for designing new drugs and treatment
protocols. Her research interests include, but are not limited to, machine learning, network science, biomarker discovery, and multi-omics data integration.

Matt is a bioinformaticist working in the Cruchaga Lab. He has a BS in Biology, a Master's of Arts in Teaching, an MS in Computer Science, and has experience as a high school STEM teacher and curriculum specialist. He leverages this training and experience to assist researchers in the lab and optimize bioinformatics software and pipelines to meet the demands of large-scale omics analyses. He works primarily with whole genome and whole exome sequencing data, processing and making the data available for analysis.

Ellen works as a Senior Bioinformaticist in Cruchaga lab.  She received her master's degree in business  analytics; healthcare analytics track from Washington University in St. Louis and has a BS in Economics.  Since joining the lab, she has been working on analyzing variants for Apolipoprotein E (APOE) to find a relation between demographic character and Alzheimer’s disease (AD).  She is also supporting other researchers to manage large datasets associated with AD and Parkinson Disease.

Jessie received her MS in Biostatistics and Data Science from Washington University in St. Louis, and has a BS in Biochemistry. Since joining the Cruchaga Lab as a bioinformatics research analyst, she has been working on processing and analyzing RNA sequencing data in order to identify changes in gene expression in Alzheimer disease.

Rachael is a Programmer I working in the Cruchaga lab. She received her Software Development and Security BS from University of Maryland Global Campus. Before joining the lab, she worked as a Data Analyst with an investment research firm.

Nick currently handle DNA extractions in the Cruchaga lab. I received my B.S. in Biology from the University of Dayton in 2016. In my free time I enjoy spending time with my family, watching movies, reading, and playing video games.

Dr. Tayebi is a physician-scientist who has had extensive training and experience on four different continents and countries including Iran, Singapore, Germany, Canada, and now the United States. After graduating from medical school in Iran, she went on to serve professionally in the human genetics field because of her enthusiasm for hereditary disorders. Thereafter she decided to continue her studies in the human genetics field in Singapore, and most of her research centered on GWAS. She applied for a PhD position at Max Planck Institute for molecular genetics in Berlin, and joined the research group of Prof. Stefan Mundlos. As a PhD candidate, she was able to find the pathogenic variants in a novel gene called ZAK in WES data. After that, a mouse model using CRISPR/Cas9 was generated to address the possible correlation between limb phenotype and Zak gene. Her first postdoctoral training at Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto was focused on hypertrophic cardiomyopathy along with hiPSC-cardiomyocyte disease modeling using CRISPR/Cas9. During her second postdoctoral position at Washington University with Dr. Gurnett’s group in St. Louis, she did a lot of research along with publications in Glut1DS. She joined Dr. Cruchaga lab in May 2023, and works with hiPSC derived neurons from patients with AD, controls and is involved in analyzing RNA sequencing data.

Alvin investigates the -omics of cognitive reserve/resilience to understand how some older adults avoid clinical dementia despite neurodegenerative burden.  As the recipient of a National Institute on Aging F99/K00 award, Alvin currently holds a Visiting Researcher position at the NeuroGenomics and Informatics Center and will transition to a Postdoctoral Research Associate fellow in 2023 under Dr. Cruchaga's mentorship.  His doctoral work will be completed at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in Epidemiology with foci in genetic and cardiovascular epidemiology (mentors Drs. Gerardo Heiss and Kari North).  He previously received a MSPH in International Health from the Johns Hopkins University and BS in Chemical Engineering at Washington and Lee University (W&L).  He also served in the AmeriCorps program as a Bonner Scholar and completed interdisciplinary training in Poverty and Human Capability studies while at W&L.

In addition to his work in dementia (end-stage brain disease), Alvin works in end-stage kidney and liver disease with a focus in organ transplantation.  He also investigates the ethical implications of epidemiologic methods and how different frameworks of justice affect intervention-based epidemiologic questions.

Jigyasha has a Bachelor’s degree in Dentistry and received her Master’s in Health Informatics and Bioinformatics from Grand Valley State University. Her work in the Cruchaga Lab focuses on the analysis of multi-omics data to identify novel QTLs associated with Alzheimer disease.

He is a molecular and cellular biologist with a strong background in Alzheimer’s disease. He obtained a MS in Pharmaceutics from the University of Florida where he worked on gene therapy for Alzheimer’s disease. Currently, he is working on the functional characterization of novel genes and pathways involved in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.