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<\/a><\/p>\nHideo Watanabe, MD, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor of Medicine, Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine and Assistant Professor, Genetics and Genomic Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Hideo Watanabe completed his medical degree, internal medicine residency and pulmonology fellowship in Keio University School of Medicine in Japan. During his clinical training in pulmonology, he cared for many lung cancer patients confronting the end-stages of their diseases. This led him to pursue research training, where he studied the role of epigenetic modification in the growth of lung cancer cells at Graduate School of Medicine in Keio University. After witnessing the emergence of a new paradigm of targeted therapeutics led by genome discoveries in cancer, he went on to train at the laboratory of Dr. Meyerson, a world leader in cancer genome analysis, at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Broad Institute. He joined faculty in Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to establish a highly collaborative program that utilizes functional genomics and state-of-the-art technologies to characterize various cellular lineages in normal lung as well as in lung cancer subtypes, and identify and elucidate the mechanism of the lineage programs that are aberrantly fixated in lung cancer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Reshmee Bhattacharya, PhD<\/strong> is a postdoctoral fellow in the Watanabe lab. She obtained B.Sc from University of Delhi and M.Sc in Biochemistry from Jamia Hamdard University before completing her PhD in Biomedical Sciences at Ambedkar Center for Biomedical Research, University of Delhi, where she studied structural and functional consequences of AGE-induced covalent modification of proteins and preventive strategies. Her current research interests are lineage plasticity under immunomodulatory treatment in lung cancer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Divagar Thirumoorthy, B. Eng<\/strong> is a Master’s student in Biomedical Science at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Divagar obtained his undergraduate study in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at National University of Singapore, working on designing a novel hydrogel system to recapitulate tumor microenvironment interactions for accurate drug screening. He is currently studying the roles of MYC family members in neuroendocrine differentiation in SCLC. He in interested in pursuing PhD and academic career as a hybrid computational and molecular biologist.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Eduard Drizik, MD<\/strong> is a resident physician at Mount Sinai Hospital and a member of the lab since 2023. Dr. Drizik received Bachelor’s degree from University of Massachusetts Amherst and Master’s degree from Boston University before completing his MD at Wayne State University. He has extensive research experience working in Dr. Spira’s lab at Boston University. His current project seeks to understand early stage lung carcinogenesis utilizing spatial genomics approach. He received Trainee Innovation Idea Award from Mount Sinai Innovation Partners in 2023.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Alumni of the Laboratory<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/a>Chandra Kishore, PhD<\/strong> is a postdoctoral fellow in the Watanabe Lab. He completed his Master of Science degree from Hindu College, University of Delhi <\/span>and PhD in Cancer Biology from IIT Madras, where he studied the roles of Wnt signaling in epithelial mesenchymal transition in colorectal cancer. After his one year of postdoctoral <\/span>training at UC Irvine Medical Center in California, he joined as a Postdoctoral Fellow <\/span>at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital. His current research interests <\/span>are epigenetics, neuroendocrine cancers and cancer neuroscience.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>Yang Tian, PhD<\/strong> was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Watanabe lab. She received her PhD degree from Tsinghua University in China. Her PhD research focused on mechanism studies in the fields of tumor microenvironment, tumor metastasis, combinational ant-cancer therapy and tumor early detection. She studied the molecular basis of cancer heterogeneity and continues her work on lineage heterogeneity and plasticity of lung cancer in the Watanabe lab. She obtained a research grant from Lung Cancer Research Foundation for her original project.<\/p>\n<\/a>Ranran Kong, MD<\/strong> is a postdoctoral fellow in the Watanabe lab. He received his MD from China Medical University. In China, he is an attending thoracic surgeon in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University. He has been a surgeon there for eight years with extensive experience in procedures and surgeries for lung and esophageal cancer patients. Dr. Kong spent one year researching at the University of Miami. He was a member of Professor Liu\u2019s research team in the Department of Surgery. His work at the University of Miami elucidates the role of Notch1 in melanoma and other types of cancer. His studied the role of NKX2-1 in small cell lung cancer (AJRCCM 2022).<\/p>\n<\/a>Douglas Mansell, PhD<\/strong> was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Watanabe lab. He received his PhD degree from Howard University in Washington D.C.. His PhD research focused on the effects of Vitamin D on cAMP production in Airway epithelia and differential transcriptomic expression in asthmatic epithelia in pediatric patients. He then completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Cornell University, in which he investigated the effects of circulating vitamin D levels on quality of life in lean vs. obese asthmatics. He worked on epigenomic profiles non-small cell lung cancers in an effort to develop novel therapeutics that target specific cancer subtypes.<\/p>\n<\/a>Ayushi<\/strong> Patel, MS<\/strong> was a Research Associate in the Watanabe lab. She joined the lab in 2017 as a Master\u2019s student in Biomedical Science with the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her research as part of Dr. Watanabe\u2019s lab focuses on the role of MYC family members that serve as a lineage specific factor in small cell lung cancer (Science Advances 2021). She graduated from the University of Rochester with a dual degree in Bachelor\u2019s of Science in Biochemistry and a Bachelor\u2019s of Arts in Psychology. She began her career as a clinical research assistant at Supratech Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad India, where she developed and validated assays for clinical screenings for cancer patients. Ayushi is currently a PhD student at NYU Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences.<\/p>\n<\/a>Feng Jiang, BS<\/strong> was a Research Associate in the Watanabe lab. He joined the lab in 2020 after earning his Bachelor of Science in Biology & Society from Cornell University. He completed his senior thesis from the department of plants biology at Cornell investigating the effect of previously uncharacterized disease resistance gene on the pathogen defense response and abiotic stress tolerance of plants Arabidopsis. He is also the founder of the Ithaca Health Initiative, which aims to expose students from underrepresented minorities to a variety of healthy living aspects. He is currently a senior research associate at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Feng hopes to pursue PhD in the future.<\/p>\n<\/a>Sarah Karam<\/strong> was a research intern in the Watanabe lab. She joined the lab in the summer of 2019 and has continued her research during her school year. She is currently a senior in Bergen County Academies. She was a finalist on the Regeneron ISEF 2020 competition for the study “Exploring the Effects of GRN on Chemotherapy Response in Small Cell Lung Cancer.”, which was conducted in the Watanabe laboratory in collaboration with Jun Zhu’s laboratory in Genetics and Genomic Sciences. Sarah is currently an undergraduate student at Cornell University majoring Biological Engineering.<\/p>\n<\/a>Rafal Krzyszto\u0144, PhD<\/strong> was a joint postdoctoral research fellow in the Watanabe lab and Eric Brouzes lab in Stony Brook University. He works on developing a new microfluidic device to accomplish single cell epigenomic analysis on a small quantity sample. He is currently a senior postdoctoral fellow at Stony Brook University.<\/p>\n