Current Graduate Students

Nancy De La Cruz

• Hometown: Plano, Texas
• Undergrad: Texas Woman's University (Biology)
• Ph.D. program: Genetics, Development and Disease
• Mentor: Ashley Solmonson, Ph.D.
• Project: Developmental metabolism and placental biology

Altair Dube

• Hometown: Newark, Delaware
• Undergrad: Florida Institute of Technology (Biological Sciences)
• Ph.D. program: Genetics, Development and Disease
• Mentor: Laura Banaszynski, Ph.D.
• Project: Mechanisms of p300 activity during cell lineage specification

Taosha Gao

• Hometown: Suzhou, China
• Undergrad: Tongji University (Software Engineering)
• M.S.: Case Western Reserve University (Computing and Information Science)
• Ph.D. program: Biomedical Engineering
• Mentor: Gary Hon, Ph.D.
• Project: Gene regulatory networks

Noah Haggerty

• Hometown: Plano, Texas
• Undergrad: University of Texas at Austin (Human Biology)
• Ph.D. program: Biological Chemistry
• Mentor: Ben Sabari, Ph.D.
• Project: Transcriptional regulation via condensate formation

Elizabeth Li

• Hometown: San Francisco, California
• Undergrad: Texas A&M (Biochemistry & Genetics)
• M.S.: Southern California University of Health Sciences (Human Genetics & Genomics)
• Ph.D. program: Applied Clinical Research
• Mentor: W. Lee Kraus, Ph.D.
• Project: Estrogen signaling in uterine muscle

Yuyan Liu

• Ph.D. program: Biomedical Engineering
• Mentor: Gary Hon, Ph.D.

Camila Perez Lujan

• Hometown: Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Undergrad: University of Buenos Aires (Molecular Biology)
• Ph.D. program: Genetics, Development and Disease
• Mentor: Ed Grow, Ph.D.
• Project: Epigenetics of the female reproductive system

Weidan Song

• Hometown: Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
• Undergrad: Wuhan University in Wuhan, Hubei, China (Biological Sciences)
• Ph.D. program: Genetics, Development and Disease
• Mentor: W. Lee Kraus, Ph.D.
• Project: Molecular determinants of PARP1 substrate selection and catalytic activity
• Fellowship: American Heart Association Predoctoral Fellowship

Anjana Sundarrajan

• Hometown: Chennai, India
• Undergrad: Manipal University, India (Pharmaceutical Sciences)
• Ph.D. program: Genetics, Development and Disease
• Mentor: Gary Hon, Ph.D.
• Project: Functional characterization of non-coding variants in cardiac development
• Scholarship: JN Tata Scholarship for Higher Education of Indians

Jerry Wei Heng Tan

• Hometown: Singapore, Singapore
• Undergrad: Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (Biological Sciences)
• Ph.D. program: Genetics, Development and Disease
• Mentors: Laura Banaszynski, Ph.D. and Gary Hon, Ph.D.
• Project: Regulatory element to function and transposable elements