Michael Whitfield
Principal Investigator, Professor of Molecular and Systems Biology
Dr. Whitfield is a Professor in the Department of Molecular and Systems Biology at the Geisel School of Medicine. He graduated with honors from North Carolina State University with degrees in biochemistry and chemistry. He received his PhD from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in Biochemistry and Biophysics working with Dr. William Marzluff and then performed post-doctoral training with Drs. David Botstein and Patrick Brown at Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Whitfield was awarded the 2002 Paper of the Year by the American Society for Cell Biology (Whitfield et al. 2002 MBC), he was a V Scholar for Cancer Research, was named a Hulda Irene Duggan Arthritis Investigator, and is the recipient of multiple NIH grants. When not in lab, he can often been found racing his bike with Team HUP United.
Helen Jarnagin
Graduate Student - BA Biology, Occidental College, California
Helen is interested in investigating the interactions of immune cell subtypes involved in SSc fibrosis. With an objective of understanding the drivers of this disease fibrosis, she hopes to identify potential targets to diminish the severity of fibrosis in SSc patients through a combination of wet-lab and computational investigations.
Noelle N. Kosarek
Graduate Student - BS Biology, Lafayette College, Pennsylvania
Noelle is currently exploring fibroblast heterogeneity in the skin of systemic sclerosis (SSc) patients by applying single cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) to a 3D tissue model of the disease.
Michael P. Mariani
Postdoctoral Research Fellow – PhD Biomedical Sciences, University of Vermont
Mike’s research focus is the application and development of computational software and pipelines to identify common gene expression and chromatin markers across autoimmune diseases - with specific attention to systemic sclerosis (SSc) and it’s four known sub-types.
Rezvan Parvizi
Graduate Student - MSc Biomedicine, Uppsala University, Sweden
Rezvan is interested in the characterization of pro-fibrotic phenotype of systemic sclerosis (SSc) using patient-derived 3D skin tissue models. Her aim is to identify potential small molecules that modulate fibrotic and immune pathways involved in SSc.
Dillon Popovich
Graduate Student - BS Biochemistry, Stony Brook University
Dillon is currently interested in drug repositioning through computational methods in order to determine potential perturbagens that may dysregulate the SSc phenotype. He is also computationally looking at potential siRNAs that may be helpful to do this. In the future he plans to test these potential hits on a 3D tissue culture system to see what best affects the morphology and genetics of the disease.
Timothy Sullivan
Research Scientist - BS Mathematics and Biology, Northeastern University, Boston
Tim is originally from Boston and since 2010 he has worked as a computational biologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Broad Institute, and the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens [Berlin, Germany], before joining the Whitfield Lab in 2020. His research focuses on exploring the relationship between genetics and gene expression in subsets of patients with the autoimmune disease systemic sclerosis. When not in the lab, he can often be found riding his bicycle to the nearest lake or stream.
Julia Taenzer
Laboratory Technician - BSc Environmental Science and Cell Biology, Jacobs University Bremen, Germany
Julia is currently working as a laboratory technician and project member of the COVID-19 Genome Sequencing Project conducted by the Geisel School of Medicine and UNH.
Tamar R. Wheeler
Graduate Student - BS Biochemistry, University of Vermont
Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is more prevalent and presents with more severe clinical outcomes within specific racial and ethnic populations. Tamar’s goal is to identify disease-relevant genetic and epigenetic abnormalities that contribute to the underlying predisposition of individuals to this disease. She is utilizing a novel 3D skin-like tissue model system built from patient-derived fibroblasts and Assay for Transposase-Accessible Chromatin using sequencing (ATAC-seq) to determine differential chromatin accessibility within actively transcribed regions and potentially identify disease-contributing SNPs in non-coding regions.
Tammara A. Wood
Program/Lab Manager – MS Healthcare Business Administration, New England College
Tammara is the Laboratory Manager specializing in DNA microarray hybridization and data capture, which helps my group drive research forward. I work on a variety of projects, providing support and guidance to Whitfield Lab members. In addition, Tammara is the Program Manager for the Center for Quantitative Biology, Where Big Data and Basic Science Meet.
Heetaek Yang
Graduate Student - BS Biological Sciences (magna cum laude), University at Buffalo, New York
Heetaek is interested in identifying the roles of macrophage and the cellular origins of diseased fibroblasts during the development of Systemic Sclerosis (SSc). To achieve these goals, he is utilizing both classical molecular cell biology methods combined with computational methods such as single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and CRISPR-mediated lineage tracing.
Yiwei Yuan
Graduate Student - BS Biology, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Yiwei is currently investigating the molecular intrinsic subsets and their pathological features using histological images. She is also exploring post-transcriptional dysregulation using gene expression profiles.
Lab Alumni
Kim Archambault
BS Biochemistry, Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of New Hampshire
My current focus is on optimizing NanoString technology to investigate the gene expression profiles of samples from patients with SSc in order to classify SSc patients into intrinsic subsets.
Lee Brooks
Graduate Student
Lee is utilizing deep sequencing technology to define cis-elements that play crucial roles in RNA biology.
Guoshuai Cai
Postdoctoral Fellow - PhD from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
My current study is focusing on selecting predictive markers for SSc severity. Also, I am identifying the SSc severity-responsible microRNAs. In addition, I hope to develop RNA-seq differential expression (DE) analysis methods tailored to our SSc studies.
Susanna Choe
Lab technician - BA from Dartmouth College
I am studying the cell cycle-regulated gene Fam64A, whose knockdown leads to monopolar spindles, and characterizing its interactions with members of the chromosomal passenger complex and positives from a yeast two-hybrid screen.
Monica E. Espinoza
Graduate Student- BS Biology, University of California, Irvine
I am currently working on exploring the role of dysbiosis in the esophageal microbiome of SSc patients to learn more about its potential as a driver of host immune response.
Jennifer M. Franks
Graduate Student - BS Applied Statistics, BS Genetics, Purdue University
I am currently working on utilizing intrinsic molecular subsets to understand disease trajectory and characterizing the immune repertoire in patients with SSc.
Mengqi Huang
Postdoctoral Fellow - PhD from Tufts University Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, Boston, MA
Scleroderma is a chronic connective tissue disease generally characterized by fibrosis, vascular alterations, and autoantibodies. My plan is to study the phenotype and gene expression patterns of scleroderma patient-derived fibroblasts in 3D tissue models of human skin. My goal is to use these tissues to understand mediators that thought to play a role in scleroderma development.
Lacy George
Graduate Student
Lacy is originally from Atlanta, GA, and earned her BS in Biology cum laude from Mercer University in Macon, GA. She is currently working on a previously unannotated cell cycle-regulated gene, Fam64A. Using microarray data of hierarchically clustered cell cycle-regulated genes, she hypothesized that the protein is involved in spindle assembly, and indeed found that knockdown of Fam64A with siRNA leads to an increase in monopolar spindles. She is currently working to further characterize the function of Fam64A and determine the mechanisms that lead to this spindle defect. She is also working to identify cell cycle-regulated genes in an untransformed cell line to investigate cell type-specific differences in cell cycle-regulated genes.
Gavin Grant
Postdoc - PhD
Gavin studies how forkhead box genes regulate cell cycle gene expression and the cell cycle regulated genes in U2OS cells.
Michael E. Johnson
Postdoctoral Fellow - PhD from Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA
I am currently investigating the role various signaling pathways play in driving pathogenesis of scleroderma. Additionally, I am investigating the role of enhanced gene expression in SSc fibroblasts.
Zhenghui "Jerry" Li
Graduate Student - BS Microbiology, cum laude
Jerry received his BS in Microbiology (with honor) from University of Rochester in 2010. While in Rochester, Jerry worked on the anti-viral immune response in frog Xenopus laevis under the instruction of Dr. Jacques Robert. Here in Whitfield Lab, Jerry works on analyzing RNA-Seq data from human scleroderma tissue. In addition, Jerry works on correlating different mice models to human scleroderma sub types by microarray.
Matt Mahoney
Postdoctoral Fellow - PhD
Meta-analysis of scleroderma gene expression microarray data.
Viktor Martyanov
Research Scientist- PhD from Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
SSc gene expression data analysis with emphasis on clinical trials.
Bhaven K. Mehta
Graduate Student - BA Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; MA Biotechnology, Boston University
Bhaven is performing RNA-sequencing on multiple organs (skin, esophagus, fundus, duodenum, and blood) from individual patients with SSc to assess whether the traditional molecular subsets found in SSc skin are conserved across multiple tissues of an individual. Bhaven is also performing RNA-sequencing on an additional cohort to evaluate the differences and similarities between the upper and lower esophagus of patients with SSc.
Sarah Pendergrass
Graduate Student
Sarah came to the Whitfield lab by way of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, where she received an MS in Biomedical Engineering. At Thayer School, in the labs of Dr. Paul Meaney and Dr. Marvin Doyley, she researched alternative breast cancer imaging modalities as well as alternative atherosclerosis imaging methods. Here, in the Whitfield Lab, Sarah is using microarray technology to investigate the genome-wide gene expression profiles of skin and blood samples from patients with the autoimmune disease systemic sclerosis (SSc) to identify biomarkers and to extend and validate SSc subsets. When Sarah is not working hard in the lab, she donates time to support local good-will causes such as the The Haven, a local shelter for homeless families.
Jennifer Sargent
Graduate Student
Jenn is originally from Brisbane Australia where she received a BSc and Honors Class I in Biochemistry from the University of Queensland. Before coming to the Whitfield Lab, Jenn was a post-graduate researcher at UCSF studying signal transduction pathways in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Jenn's research currently centers around the hypothesis that different mouse models may each resemble a different subtype of scleroderma disease. She has extensively characterized the gene expression signatures in murine cGVHD skin and found that gene expression bears a remarkable similarity to that found in the 'Inflammatory' subset of scleroderma patients. She is currently analyzing the TSK1 & TSK2 models and the bleomycin-induced fibrosis models to examine their similarities to human SSc in the context of the intrinsic subsets. She has also defined in vitro mechanistic signatures for profibrotic cytokines TGF, IL13 and IL4 in dermal fibroblasts and has identified differential expression of these signaling pathways in the intrinsic subsets found in scleroderma skin. Outside of lab Jenn is an avid foodie, road biker, climber and crossfitter, and in addition to being a graduate student is also a dedicated crazy cat lady.
Jaclyn N. Taroni
Graduate Student - BS Biology, Lehigh University
I work on functional genomic meta-analyses of multiple tissues and clinical manifestations of systemic sclerosis.
Diana M. Toledo
Graduate Student - BA Biology, Brown University; MS Genetic Counseling, Boston University
I am currently investigating the molecular outcomes of patients with SSc during different time points throughout the mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) drug trial. In addition, I am working on identifying DNA methylation signatures in SSc subsets and SSc-causing cell types (like macrophages).
Yue (Frank) Wang
Postdoctoral Fellow - PhD from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
SSc gene expression data analysis with emphasis on clinical trials.