Meet Our Team

noam.beckmann@mssm.edu

Noam Beckmann PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Data Driven and Digital Medicine (D3M) in the Department of Medicine in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai as well as the Director of Data Sciences and founding member for the Mount Sinai Clinical Intelligence Center (MSCIC) and the associate director of Data Science Strategy of the Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine (CBIPM). His work has contributed to the identification of master regulators of complex diseases and traits such as Alzheimer’s disease, stemness heterogeneity of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), peanut allergic reactions, cancer, coronary artery disease, schizophrenia and chronic fatigue syndrome, to the description of new method to identify cancer driver pathways, to the identification of molecular processes involved in the host response to COVID-19, multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children and the post-acute sequelae to SARS-CoV-2 infection, and to the molecular characterization of differences between human living and post-mortem brains, both at the single nuclei as well as at the bulk level. During the COVID-19 surge, he co-created and had a leading role in the design of the Mount Sinai COVID-19 Biobank and was the lead for analyses of all multi-omics data generated as part of it, encompassing molecular and extended clinical data derived from patients’ EHR. His focus is on leveraging new approaches to big data analysis and integration of multiple layers of omics, from genome to phenome with everything in between, with the goal of better understanding health and disease. Outside of work, Noam is a father of two children and is trying to teach them how to ski.

ryan.thompson2@mssm.edu

Ryan Thompson, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Data Driven and Digital Medicine (D3M) in the Department of Medicine in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He completed his PhD at Scripps Research in La Jolla, CA. He has a 12-year history of applying and adapting bioinformatics methods to address both anticipated and unanticipated research challenges, even developing new methods when the need arises. His broad methodological background includes normalization, differential expression, machine learning, gene set testing, and data visualization with both sequencing and array-based data. In addition, he has a broad background in general biology and in immunology in particular, along with a strong foundation in statistics. In his current work at Mount Sinai, he has developed a colored graph visualization tool to aid in quick, accurate identification and correction of mislabeled samples in a data set of 2385 RNA-seq and whole-genome sequencing samples. His broad understanding of commonly used statistical and computational methods enables him to continue adapting to and overcoming similar unexpected analysis challenges that may arise in the course of the proposed research. Outside the lab, Ryan considers it a success if his D&D group has to pull out a physics textbook to figure out what happens next.

negar.golestani@mssm.edu

Negar Golestani, Ph.D., is an Instructor in the Department of Medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Golestani joined Mount Sinai in 2024 after completing her Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University. She got her MS/Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and a MS in Computer Science from the University of Southern California. Her research is mainly focused on integrating multi-modal health data to advance personalized healthcare, with a particular emphasis on health sensing, imaging, and the application of AI in medical data analysis. In her postdoctoral work, she developed AI-based radiology-pathology fusion techniques, facilitating the creation of detection models capable of distinguishing between different cancer subtypes on pre-operative breast MRI scans. This advancement facilitates pixel-level assessments and enhances patient screening for breast cancer. During her doctoral studies, Dr. Golestani specialized in creating a low-power wearable system using magnetic induction for human activity recognition and 3D motion tracking. This innovative system offers prolonged usage without recharging, making it ideal for extended monitoring and various applications such as daily activity tracking, sports analysis, and post-stroke patient rehabilitation. Outside of lab, Negar enjoys drawing, playing video games , and enjoys watching movies.

anina.lund@icahn.mssm.edu

Anina received her B.A. in Cognitive Science with a minor in Music from the University of California Berkeley in 2020. As an undergraduate, Anina worked in multiple labs at different institutions. At UC Berkeley, Anina worked in two psychology labs, one working on a longitudinal study of women with/without childhood ADHD, and the other looking at children’s development of self and social support. Anina also worked in a genetic lab at UC Berkeley, studying the processes that contribute to proteostasis collapse with age using C.elegans as a model system. Over the summers, Anina had the opportunity to work in a lab at Yale University looking at the role of mitochondrial uncoupling protein 2 in energy and glucose metabolism using in vivo mouse models. She also had the chance to work at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai looking at common variants of schizophrenia and their function in high and low risk schizophrenia backgrounds using hIPSC-based model. Anina is currently a 4th year Neuroscience PhD student co-mentored by Dr. Noam Beckmann, Dr. Alex Charney and Dr. Eric Nestler studying the integration of gene expression and imaging from human patients enrolled in the Living Brain Project. Outside of lab Anina is always up for coffee and going on adventures

ariela.buxbaumgrice@icahn.mssm.edu

Ariela Buxbaum Grice is a first year PhD student in the Neuroscience program. She graduated from Connecticut College in 2020 with a major in Biological Sciences and a minor in Studio Art. Since graduation, she has done computational work at both the Genomics and Bioinformatics Hub and Brigham and Womens/Harvard and here at Mount Sinai. She is interested in the “-omics” underlying psychiatric disorders of the brain, as well as leveraging electronic health records to help better phenotypically and genetically define more common psychiatric disorders. She loves animals (even the icky ones) more than most people, and enjoys walking aimlessly, oil painting, drawing with colored pencil, crafting, and collecting miniature food for her tiny kitchen.

eli.kritzer@icahn.mssm.edu

Eli graduated from Tufts in 2023 with a Bachelor of Science in Biology. During his undergrad, Eli studied the molecular mechanisms of dopaminergic synapse formation in the Umemori lab at Boston Children’s Hospital. Eli is currently a 1st year PhD student in the Beckmann lab leveraging multi-omic data over time and across different cell types to build better understandings of diseases. Outside of science, Eli enjoys running marathons, dancing until sunrise, traveling around the world, convoluted strategy games, and hiking/skiing mountains.

jolie.hoang@icahn.mssm.edu

Jolie, originally from Hanoi, Vietnam, earned her Bachelor of Science in Medical and Molecular Biology from MCPHS University in 2021 and completed her Master of Arts in Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University in 2023. Overall, she is dedicated to developing sustainable, clinically translatable solutions for underserved communities. Her previous work at Harvard Medical School under the guidance of Dr. Matcheri Keshavan and Dr. Paulo Lizano utilized a multimodal approach to investigate the pathology of psychosis. Additionally, Jolie contributed to global mental health initiatives in Chile and Vietnam through projects at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and Medical School, collaborating with Dr. Lawrence Yang and Dr. Ragy Girgis.
Currently, as a first-year Neuroscience PhD student, Jolie is co-mentored by Dr. Noam Beckmann and Dr. Girish Nadkarni. Her research focuses on applying machine learning techniques to analyze multi-omics data and imaging from human participants involved in the Living Brain Project. When she’s not in the lab, Jolie enjoys going on adventures around NYC and abroad and spending quality time with family and friends.

charles.deng@mssm.edu

Charles is an associate bioinformatician in the Department of Medicine at Mount Sinai. After graduating from Brown in 2019 with a major in Applied Math-Economics, he worked for three years building trading algorithms in quantitative finance before leaving his job to pursue a career in medicine. At the Beckmann Lab, he is working on mislabeling correction on multi omics datasets. In his free time, Charles is always up for a game of Catan or poker–he also offers table tennis lessons at PingPod!