Elena Austin
Prerna Bhargava
Meric Erikci
Yelena Margolin, PhD
Natalie Moroz
Alvin Ling
Jessica Lucas
Kristopher Stanya

Elena Austin is an entering first year student in the DS program in Environmental Health, supervised by Dr. Petros Koutrakis.  Elena has played violin since the age of 4, and has a graduate degree in violin performance in one of the top-ranked US music conservatories (Mannes College of Music).  Her formal training in music was simultaneously paralleled with studies in science and math, and she graduated with a joint major in mathematics and physiology from McGill University.  She has been active in NIOSH-funded research in the laboratory of Beverly Cohen and Judy Xiong at NYU, and has been drawn to the emerging field of nanotechnology.  Her goal is to study dosimetry patterns of nanostructural particles and their movement through biological systems following exposure.  She is affiliated with the Aerosol Technology Laboratory at HSPH, supervised by Dr. Petros Koutrakis.

Prerna Bhargava is a second year predoctoral student in the Biological Sciences in Public Health (BPH) program. She graduated from Brandeis University with a B.S., where she studied genetic instability.  Her studies at Brandeis also involved legal issues as a minor, so she has past interdisciplinary training in her “passion for biochemical research, patient advocacy, and the law”.  Prerna is currently performing her thesis research in the area of lipid metabolism and inflammation in Dr. Chih-Hao Lee's laboratory. 

Meric Erikci is a PhD student in the Biological Sciences in Public Health program at HSPH.  She is a recent graduate from Bilkent University (Turkey), where she was the first-ranked student in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics.  Meric has a wide variety of previous laboratory experience, from bioinformatics and analysis of chip-array data (Tayfun Ozcelik, Bilkent University) to studies of metabolic stress and inflammation (Fahri Saatcioglu, University of Oslo).  Her interests are to study “the underlying mechanisms in diseases through analyzing interactions between environmental input and molecular responses tin an interdisciplinary context.”

Alvin Ling received the BSc degree in biochemistry from McGill University last spring.  Alvin was selected for our program because he seeks to combine ‘various aspects of nutrition, epidemiology and genetics’ in his research.  He is seeking “the opportunity to collaborate with scientists from an even wider range of disciplines to solve biological questions from a variety of different perspectives.”

Jessica Lucas is a first year predoctoral student in the Biological Sciences in Public Health (BPH) program.  She graduated from Princeton University.  As an undergraduate, Jessica was able to "integrate my interest in understanding cancer's complex genetic and environmental causes with my fascination for policy issues related to pharmacogenomics, including implications of genetic screening, the development of tailored therapeutics, and the potential for biomarker-based prevention and clinical management of disease [by] pursuing a certificate in public policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs."  This broad translational experience was complemented by research internships at Wyeth's Oncology Department each summer of her undergraduate career.  

Yelena Margolin, Ph.D. is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow supervised by Drs. Alexander Ivanov, Xihong Lin, and Gokhan Hotamisligil.  Oxidative stress is a prominent feature of a great variety of diseases, such as arthrosclerosis, cancer and diabetes.  Identification of basic molecular mechanisms involved in cellular response to oxidative stress is needed for understanding of the pathogenesis of these diseases.  Yelena’s project involves the use of proteomics to characterize the evolution of cellular oxidative stress response in a comprehensive, consistent, and time-resolved manner, as well as the development of analytical and statistical tools that can be used in the future studies of other basic molecular processes.  An in vitro experimental model of oxidative stress, in which cultured mammalian cells are treated with different concentrations of hydrogen peroxide, is used in all experiments.  Proteomic state of these cells is assessed after subcellular fractionation, followed by protein isolation and characterization by nano-liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry (nano-LC/MS/MS).  Enrichment procedures are applied to the subcellular fractions, resulting in selective isolation of proteins containing post-translational modifications, such as phosphorylation, glycosylation, acetylation and ubiquitination, that are subsequently characterized by nano-LC/MS/MS. Yelena is working with Xihong Lin, a bioinformatics specialist, to develop in-house computational and statistical platforms to yield a list of quantitative and qualitative changes in a) composition of the proteome and b) levels of proteins' post-translational modifications, as a function of time, subcellular localization and concentration of hydrogen peroxide.

Natalie Moroz is a first year predoctoral student in the Biological Sciences in Public Health (BPH) program. She recently completed her undergraduate degree at Brown University.  She has extensive research experience in a variety of fields, having worked on projects in alcohol and behavior (Klaus Miczek, Tufts University), Parkinson's Disease (Michael Scholssmacher, Harvard Medical School), and chronic obesity (Suzanne de la Monte, Brown University).  She was selected for the roadmap training program because of her vision "to utilize an integrated neuroscience approach to study how impaired brain function leads to the development of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes". 

Kristopher Stanya, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Genetics and Complex Diseases mentored by Dr. Chih-Hao Lee. Nuclear receptors (NRs) play an important role in many biological processes, including development, reproduction and metabolic homeostasis. Dr. Stanya is examining the role of SMRT, a nuclear receptor co-repressor, in metabolism, inflammation and aging. SMRT modulates NR activity through the recruitment of a repression complex. Kris will study a new mouse model carrying knock in mutations in SMRT, that abolish its interaction with NRs. Preliminary data suggest that SMRT mutant mice exhibit increased differentiation potential of several progenitor cells, including pre-adipocytes and bone marrow. These studies will elucidate molecular mechanisms through which NRs and SMRT control cell fate determination of pre-adipocytes and hematopoietic stem cells.