Developmental Biology | Research Interests

Name	Email	PhD Program
Miller, Colette WEBSITE EMAIL PUBLICATIONS	PHD PROGRAM Toxicology RESEARCH INTEREST Cardiovascular Biology, Cardiovascular Disease, Developmental Biology, Epigenetics & Chromatin Biology, Genomics, Metabolism, Molecular Biology, Molecular Mechanisms of Disease, Physiology, Pulmonary Research, Toxicology	Our research investigates the effects of air pollutants on maternal health, paternal health, and the health of their children. Through the use of genomics, metabolomics, and proteomics, we investigate the molecular underpinnings of diseases following exposures to pollutants during sensitive life stages. We have broad interests across many tissue systems and diseases relevant to fertility and pregnancy. Our work also explores the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease hypothesis, investigating risks of metabolic diseases in offspring following maternal or paternal exposures to pollutants.
Haendel, Melissa WEBSITE EMAIL PUBLICATIONS	PHD PROGRAM Bioinformatics & Computational Biology, Genetics & Molecular Biology RESEARCH INTEREST Bioinformatics, Developmental Biology, Developmental Disorders, Genetic Basis of Disease, Genetics, Human Subjects Research, Molecular Mechanisms of Disease, Translational Medicine	The Translational and Integrative Sciences Laboratory (TISLab) aims to weave together healthcare systems, basic science research, and patient generated data through development of data integration technologies and innovative data capture strategies. Our research focuses on the development of semantic technologies for data harmonization and analytics, such as ontologies, knowledge graphs, and data models. We leverage these semantic resources to standardize phenotypic information coming from clinical encounters, model and veterinary species, and directly from patients. As part of a longstanding international consortium called the Monarch Initiative, we utilize structured phenotype data to integrate of genotype-phenotype data across species to improve rare disease diagnosis, mechanism discovery, and to identify treatments. We work with a number of rare disease communities around the world with the goal of making our data standards available for everyone and translated into different languages so that everyone can have access to the same knowledge and have the same chance for a diagnosis. We are passionate about environmental health and understanding new ways of making environmental and nutrition data computable alongside clinical data. For example, we have integrated patient nutrition survey data together with basic research knowledge to reveal dietary risk factors of women’s reproductive disorders. We recently obtained funding to create an atlas for toxicological experiments and phenotypic outcomes in the zebrafish. TISLab has also recently created a veterinary One Health program, which focuses on understanding health influences affecting veterinary species together with their pet parents. During Covid, we led a national initiative to harmonize Electronic Health Record data to aid discovery analytics, called the National Covid Cohort Collaborative (N3C). The N3C is now the largest publicly available HIPAA-limited dataset in US history, and has ~5,000 users. We have studied long-Covid, advised the White House and governor’s offices, and have won the NIH/FASEB DataWorks! Grand prize for our work on N3C. We also lead the Center for Linkage and Aquisition of Data (CLAD) for the All of Us Research Program. The CLAD aims to link passive data streams such as insurance claims, mortality, and environmental data to program participants to provide a more comprehensive picture of their health trajectories. We have produced several global standards, such as the Human Phenotype Ontology, Phenopackets (Global Alliance for Genomics and Health and ISO certified), Mondo, and LinkML. We regularly attend the American Medical Informatics Association, the American Association of Human Genetics, the International Biocuration Society, and the Bioinformatics Open Source at ISMB conferences. TISLab members come from a wide variety of of scientific backgrounds and interests, making us effective partners in translational science and collaborative analytics.
Sadovsky, Matheus EMAIL	PHD PROGRAM RESEARCH INTEREST Cell Biology, Cell Signaling, Developmental Biology	“I am interested in research questions involving cell and developmental biology; specifically, understanding how signaling pathways drive cell fate and contribute to the structure and function of an organ system. Because several human diseases arise from malfunctions of cellular mechanisms, research in this area is important for expanding our understanding of cells and designing targeted treatments.”
Roland, Abigail EMAIL	PHD PROGRAM RESEARCH INTEREST Developmental Biology, Epigenetics, Epigenetics & Chromatin Biology, Molecular Biology	“I love studying epigenetics and its wide ranging applications from cancer biology to cell differentiation. In graduate school, I hope to explore the mechanisms and impacts of epigenetic regulation in normal development and disease conditions. I also have an interest in neuroscience and am interested in potentially conducting research on chromatin states epigenetic regulatory events within the brain.”
Norton, Jenna EMAIL	PHD PROGRAM RESEARCH INTEREST Cell Biology, Developmental Biology, Genetics	“My research experience has ranged from tropical ecology to identifying downstream effectors of collective cell migration, so, my interests are very broad. I am excited about how cells change shape and move and how this affects the whole animal. I am looking forward to learning more about how cells communicate with each other and furthering my scientific journey.”
Long, Katherine EMAIL	PHD PROGRAM RESEARCH INTEREST Cell Biology, Cell Signaling, Developmental Biology	“I am interested in studying cell signaling and/or the formation of tissue architecture in developmental contexts. I am also interested in exploring this topic in different model systems or tissue types.”
Huizar, Kaitlyn EMAIL	PHD PROGRAM RESEARCH INTEREST Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Developmental Biology, Neurobiology	“I am broadly interested in developmental neurobiology in the context of psychiatric illnesses and learning disabilities. Within this scope, I am interested in studying time periods ranging from perinatal through adolescence and am flexible with techniques and model systems. Some topics of interest within include: alcohol and drug abuse, pharmacology, sleep, nutrition, stress exposure, cognition, genetics/epigenetics, biochemistry/cell/molecular biology, bioinformatics/computational biology. To list some techniques of interest: wet lab/biochemical assays, imaging (both tissue staining and fMRI), animal/human behavioral assays, and computational algorithms.”
Henley, Trevor EMAIL	PHD PROGRAM RESEARCH INTEREST Cardiovascular Biology, Cell Biology, Developmental Biology	“I’m very interested in how cells handle ions in order to create different membrane potentials. I’m trying to look at this through the context of heart development, and cellular biology.”
de Jesus, Bailey EMAIL	PHD PROGRAM RESEARCH INTEREST Cell Biology, Developmental Biology, Molecular Biology	“I am interested in research related to cell and developmental biology. I want to better understand how cells make and carry out decisions about division, organization, and differentiation during development.”
Barry, Aure EMAIL	PHD PROGRAM RESEARCH INTEREST Cell Biology, Developmental Biology, Genetics	“I am interested in understanding the epigenetic mechanisms that control cell fate determination, and how the dysregulation of these mechanisms can influence human health and disease.”

Research Interest: Developmental Biology