Former Ma’ayan Lab PhD students, postdoctoral fellows, bioinformaticians, and computational systems biologists have authored or co-authored publications in leading journals, including Nature, Science, PNAS, Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine, Bioinformatics and Science Signaling. The Ma’ayan Lab alumni have gone to leadership positions in industry and have also been recruited to academic positions. Several of our bioinformatics and computational systems biology research trainees have entered PhD programs at top tier institutions, including Princeton, MIT, Columbia, Duke and Cornell.

PhD Students

Zichen Wang, PhD
Training Period in Lab: 2013-2016
Thesis: Methods for Collecting, Improving and Exploring Mammalian Gene Expression Signatures

Qiaonan Duan, PhD
Training Period in Lab: 2012-2016
Thesis: Harnessing the LINCS L1000 Data for Drug Discovery and Drug Response Analysis
Current Position: Computational Biology Scientist, NuMedii

Yan Kou, PhD
Training Period in Lab: 2011-2015
Thesis: Big Data Analytics for Understanding Mechanism of Human Disease
Current Position: Vice President of Clinical Data Science, Xbiome

Huilei Xu, PhD
Training Period in Lab: 2009-2012
Thesis: Analysis of Transcriptional Networks in mESCs
Current Position: Investigator III, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR)

Postdoctoral Fellows

Nicolas Fernandez, PhD
Training Period in Lab: 2013-2017
Current Position: Computational Scientist, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Andrew Rouillard, PhD
Training Period in Lab: 2013-2016
Summary of Research: Inferring Cell Signaling Pathways from LINCS
Current Position: Data Scientist, SHI International Corp

Neil Clark, PhD
Training Period in Lab: 2011-2015
Summary of Research: Statistical Methods for Network Analysis in Systems Biology
Current Position: Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh (UK)

Ben MacArthur, PhD
Training Period in Lab: 2008-2011
Summary of Research: Systems Biology of mESCs
Current Position: Professor, University of Southampton (UK)

Amin Mazloom, PhD
Training Period in Lab: 2008-2011
Summary of Research: Network Analysis of NURSA HT IP-MS Proteomics
Current Position: Senior Director, Discovery Bioinformatics, Progenity, Inc.

Bioinformaticians and Software / Database Developers

Megan Wojciechowicz, MS
Training Period in Lab: 2017-2019
Current Position: PhD Student, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Denis Torre, BS
Training Period in Lab: 2016-2019
Current Position: PhD Student, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Shai Magidi, MEng
Training Period in Lab: 2016-2017
Current Position: PhD Student, Tulane University

Anders Dohlman, BA
Training Period in Lab: 2015-2017
Current Position: PhD Student, Duke University

Gregory Gundersen, MA
Training Period in Lab: 2014-2016
Current Position: PhD Student, Princeton University

Michael McDermott, BS
Training Period in Lab: 2014-2016
Current Position: Lead Platform Engineer, Lifion

Matthew Jones, BS
Training Period in Lab: 2014-2015
Current Position: Software Engineer, Market2x (Auckland, New Zealand)

Edward Chen, MS
Training Period in Lab: 2010-2013
Summary of Research: Enrichr: Interactive and Collaborative HTML5 Gene List Enrichment Analysis Tool
Current Position: Staff Software Engineer, Spotify

Ruth Dannenfelser, MSE
Training Period in Lab: 2010-2012
Summary of Research: Software Tools for Systems Biology
Current Position: PhD Student, Princeton University

Simon Gordonov, PhD
Training Period in Lab: 2011-2012
Summary of Research: Software Tools for Systems Biology
Current Position: Scientist, Vertex Pharmaceuticals

Christopher Tan, MD
Training Period in Lab: 2011-2012
Summary of Research: Software Tools for Systems Biology
Current Position: Resident Physician, Saint Louis University School of Medicine

Caroline Baroukh, PhD
Training Period in Lab: 2010-2011
Summary of Research: Embryonic Stem Cells Atlas of Pluripotency Evidence (ESCAPE) Database
Current Position: Research Manager, INRA (France)

Undergraduate and Post-bac Research Trainees

Katherine Chew
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2018
Undergraduate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Summary of Research: Predicting Gene Signatures for Understudied Small Molecules

Zachary Flamholz
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2018
Undergraduate, Princeton University
Summary of Research: modEnrichr: Gene List Enrichment Analysis Tools for Fish, Fly, Worm, and Yeast
Current Position: MD/PhD Student, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Hannah Freid
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2018
Undergraduate, Princeton University
Summary of Research: Integrative Analysis to Suggest Combination Therapies for Ovarian Cancer

Kevin Moses
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2018
Undergraduate, Yale University
Summary of Research: JOIN: The Journal of Interactive Notebooks

Vivek Sriram
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2018
Undergraduate, Duke University
Summary of Research: Predicting Diabetes Risk from Labs and Vitals with Machine Learning
Current Position: PhD Student, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine

Vivian Utti
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2018
Undergraduate, Cornell University
Summary of Research: ChEA3: Transcription Factor Enrichment Analysis

Derek Wang
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2018
East Brunswick High School
Summary of Research: GTEx2BioJupies: Jupyter Notebook Analysis Reports from Interactive Selection of GTEx Portal Samples
Current Position: Undergraduate, Carnegie Mellon University

Lily Wang
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2017, Fall 2018, Summer 2018
Undergraduate, Cornell University
Summary of Research: FAIRshake: Digital Objects Evaluation System and FAIRshake: Toolkit to Assess the FAIRness of Biomedical Digital Objects

Sherry Xie
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2018
Undergraduate, Cornell University
Summary of Research: Standard API to Enable Semantic Integration of the Tools Developed by the Ma’ayan Lab

Patrycja Krawczuk
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2017
Undergraduate, Hunter College
Summary of Research: Automated Indexing of Bioinformatics Tools
Current Position: PhD Student, University of Southern California

Marina Latif
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2017
Undergraduate, Princeton University
Summary of Research: Mining the Human Kinome

Joyce (Hyojin) Lee
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2017
Undergraduate, Princeton University
Summary of Research: Predicting Gene Function and PPIs with Co-Expression Data

Ariel Leong
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2017
Undergraduate, Stanford University
Summary of Research: ChEA3 – Improving Transcription Factor Enrichment Analysis by Data Integration

Damon Pham
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2017, Fall 2017 and Summer 2019
Undergraduate, Indiana University Bloomington
Summary of Research: Developing Novel Gene Set Enrichment Analysis Algorithms

Christopher Tseng
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2017
Undergraduate, Emory University
Summary of Research: Analysis and Visualization of MCF10A Data for the LINCS Common Project
Current Position: Medical Student, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School

Charlotte Zuber
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2017
Undergraduate, Rutgers University
Summary of Research: Visualization of the Space of 200,000 Annotated Gene Sets

Esther Chen
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2016
Undergraduate, Cornell University
Summary of Research: Cite-D-Lite: Chrome Extension for Data and Paper Citations with Text Importance Highlighting
Current Position: Medical Student, SUNY Downstate Medical Center College of Medicine

Axel Feldmann
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2016
Undergraduate, Carnegie Mellon University
Summary of Research: X2K-Web: an Updated Web-based Version of the Expression2Kinases Pipeline
Current Position: PhD Student, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Daniel Clarke
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2016
Undergraduate, Fairleigh Dickinson University
Summary of Research: Project 1) Adhesome 2016: An Updated Adhesome Site with Predictions of New Member Components; Project 2) Genes2WordCloud: A Biology Oriented Interactive Word Cloud Generator
Current Position: Data Science Analyst II, Ma’ayan Laboratory, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Jennifer Lin
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2016
Oceanside High School
Summary of Research: Predicting Potential Drugs for Diabetic Nephropathy using L1000 Data

Katie Lin, BS, MS
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2016
Undergraduate, Columbia University
Summary of Research: Visualization of the Multi-Layered Data from the LINCS MCF10A Dense Cube Project
Current Position: Analyst, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Colette Malyack, BS, MS
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2016
Undergraduate, Fairleigh Dickinson University
Summary of Research: Predicting Experimental Platforms by Examining Gene-Set Content
Current Position: PhD Student, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Kevin Sani
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2016
Undergraduate, Harvard University
Summary of Research: Dr. Gene Budger: Web App to Predict Drugs to Modulate the Expression of a Specific Gene
Current Position: Senior Associate Consultant, Bain & Company

Benjamin Kaplan
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2015
Undergraduate, Carnegie Mellon University
Summary of Research: Integrative Analysis and Visualization of Gene Expression Signatures toward the Repurposing of FDA Approved Drugs as Antiviral Medications
Current Position: Cancer Genomics Research Associate, Foundation Medicine

Emily Kuang
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2015
Undergraduate, New York City College of Technology
Summary of Research: Assessing the Dimensionality of MCF7 Cells Response to Perturbations

Azu Lee, MS
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2015
Undergraduate, University of Washington
Summary of Research: Interactive Mobile App Game for Deconvolution of Gene Set Modules from Gene Set Enrichment Analyses
Current Position: Software Development Engineer II, Amazon

Aditi Dandapani, PhD
Training Period in Lab: 2009-2010
Summary of Research: Dynamical Model of Viral DI Particles
Current Position: Postdoctoral Fellow, Ecole Polytechnique

Michael Komosinski, BS
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2011
Undergraduate, Colgate University
Summary of Research: Integrating, Predicting, and Visualizing Mammalian Protein-Protein Interaction Networks
Current Position: Software Developer, Google

John Zhuang, BS
Training Period in Lab: 2010
Undergraduate, Columbia University
Summary of Research: Regulatory Network Created from Loss of Function and Gain of Function Studies of Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells

Mariola Szenk, PhD
Training Period in Lab: 2009
Undergraduate, Hunter College
Summary of Research: PathwayGenerator2: Automated Visualization of Signaling Pathways using Flash and ActionScript 3
Current Position: Postdoctoral Researcher, Stony Brook University

Visiting High School Students

Mounica Kamesam
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2014 and 2015
Yorktown High School
Summary of Research: Automated Data Integration and Data Mining to Improve Breast Cancer Classification
Current Position: Undergraduate, Northeastern University

Axel Feldmann
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2014 and 2016
Hunter College High School
Summary of Research: Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patient Classification with Enrichment Vectors
Current Position: PhD Student, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Jayanath Krishnan
Training Period in Lab: Summer 2010
Mahopac High School
Summary of Research: Regulatory Signatures of Cancer Cell Lines Inferred from Expression Data
Current Position: Researcher, IBM Watson Health

Visiting Medical Students

Alexander Barash, MD
Training Period in Lab: 2007-2008
Summary of Research: Systems Pharmacology
Current Position: Vitreoretinal Surgeon, New York Retina Care

Ryan Logan Webb, MD
Training Period in Lab: 2007-2008
Summary of Research: Software Tools for Systems Biology
Current Position: Radiologist, Staten Island University Hospital