Lab Members

Katie did her Ph.D. training at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory with Scott Lowe (currently MSKCC). She moved to C. elegans and Worcester, Massachusetts to do her postdoc with Victor Ambros as UMass Medical School. She began her independent research program at NIH in 2017, and is having fun leading a team of young scientists.

Neha graduated with a degree in Biology from University of Virginia where she performed research on parasitic nematodes. For her post-bac research Neha is investigating regulation of microRNAs in C. elegans using fluorescent reporters and forward genetic screens.

Acadia graduated from University of Delaware in 2018 with a degree in Biology. She was a post-baccalaureate research fellow in the lab from 2018-2020, and she re-joined the lab as a Ph.D. student in the JHU-NIH Graduate Partnership Program in 2021. She is studying the regulation of mir-35 family decay and new approaches using crosslinking immunprecipitation.

Kasuen received his B.S. in Biochemistry from Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University. He joined Marco Mangone’s laboratory to perform his Ph.D. research studying tissue-specific alternative splicing and microRNA-mediated silencing. His postdoctoral research is examining the function and regulation of the mir-51 family of microRNAs as well as the functions of conserved RNA binding proteins.

Meena is a Montgomery College alumna and is currently finishing her bachelor’s degree at University of Maryland. She is supporting lab operations by preparing nematode growth media.

Rima graduated from Montgomery College with her associate's degree in Chemistry and Biochemistry in 2015, and then went on to University of Maryland Baltimore County where she earned her bachelor's degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2017. She was a post-baccalaureate fellow in Richard Maraia's lab at NIH from 2017-2019, before starting graduate school in the NIH-JHU Graduate Partnership Program. She joined the lab for her thesis research in November 2020, where she is studying non-canonical microRNA biogenesis and regulation of Argonaute proteins.

Rey earned her B.S. in Biology from University of St. Thomas in Houston, TX. She then moved to Vanderbilt for her Ph.D. research with Jared Nordman where she investigated regulation of histones in early Drosophila development. Rey is using mammalian cell culture to perform CRISPR screens for novel regulators of microRNA decay.

Bing received her Ph.D. in Biology from Syracuse University where she worked with Eleanor Maine studying the interplay between H3K9 dimethylation, DNA repair and small RNAs in C. elegans. Prior to her graduate work, Bing received her undergraduate degree from Wuhan University in Hubei, China. During her postdoctoral fellowship, Bing is working on defining the microRNA binding sites that are essential for development in C. elegans, taking innovative CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing approaches.

After performing his undergraduate and Ph.D. research at McGill University, Karl was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab from 2018 to 2024. He identified the enzymes that carry out microRNA tailing in C. elegans and studied the effect of tailing on microRNA decay. He secured a K99/R00 transitional award to start his own lab studying mRNA tailing in the C. elegans germline at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Graciela joined the lab through the Colgate University-NIH Study Group in the summer through fall semester of 2022. She worked on generating reagents to understand the function of terminal nucleotidyl transferases in the germline. After graduating from Colgate, she returned to NIH for a post-baccalaureate fellowship in Marc Ghany’s lab.

Bridget was a Ph.D. student through the NIH-Johns Hopkins Graduate Partnership Program in the lab from 2017 to 2022. Previously, she earned her Biochemistry degree from Allegheny College and a Masters of Science from Johns Hopkins. Her Ph.D. project focused on the understanding the how the mir-35 family of microRNAs is regulated. After graduating, she moved on to a position at Glaxo Smith Kline. 

Katie graduated from Wake Forest University in 2017 with a degree in Biology. She was a post-baccalaureate research fellow in the lab from 2017-2019. She is currently a medical student at Stanford University.

Lars graduated from University of Tampa with a degree in Molecular Biology and was a post-baccalaureate research fellow in the lab from 2017-2019. He is currently a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University.

Priscilla is an Associate Professor at Colgate University who was a visiting scientist in the lab during the 2019-2020 academic year when she served as the faculty mentor for the Colgate-NIH study group. Her lab focuses on understanding the role of the circadian rhythm gene KIN-20 in regulating microRNA and protein-coding gene expression.