Who we are
Current
Christopher Brown PhD, Associate Professor
Casey received his B.S. in Biochemistry at the University of Nebraska.
He was a graduate student in the
Genetics Department at Stanford University.
He conducted his post-doctoral research in
Human Genetics at the University of Chicago.
He moved to Philadelphia in 2013 and has never seen so many pretzels. He is interested in understanding the
role of gene expression variation in complex human phenotypes and insists that his lab be in control of
both the means of data production and analysis.
A recentish CV is
here.
Shweta Ramdas, Post-Doctoral fellow
Shweta received a bachelor's in Computational Biology from the National University of Singapore.
She completed her Ph.D in Bioinformatics from the University of Michigan in 2018, where she
worked on the genomics of complex traits with
Jun Li.
Her current research is focused on characterizing the regulatory architectures of disease-associated loci in the human genome.
Katerina Gawronski, Graduate student
Katerina received her B.S. in Neuroscience From the University of Michigan in 2015, where she worked in the lab of
Margit Burmeister.
She is now jointly advised by Casey and
Ben Voight.
Her research is focused on developing computational and experimental methods to characterize the contribution of
post transcriptional regulation to human complex complex trait variation.
Brandon Wenz, Graduate student
Brandon received his B.S. in Biology from Temple University in 2014.
He previously worked as a research technician in the lab of
Kate Nathanson.
His research is focused on identifying and functionally characterizing causal variants
for coronary artery disease and other liver-related traits.
Elizabeth Burton, Graduate student
Elizabeth received her B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular biology and B.A. in Music from Gettysburg College in 2018,
where she worked in the labs of Veronique Delesalle and Steven James.
She is jointly mentored by both Casey and
Struan Grant at CHOP.
Her research is focused on identifying causal variants implicated by GWAS in Alzheimer’s Disease and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Grace Babcock, Research Specialist
Grace Babcock graduated from Temple University in 2009 with a B.A. in Anthropology and spent the
spent the following three years working as a Research Specialist in the Penn Department of
Biochemistry and Biophysics. She obtained an M.P.H. from
Penn in 2015.
Alumni
Marco Trizzino Ph.D., Post-doctoral fellow
Marco
obtained his B.S. in Biology from
Bicocca University in Milan.
Then he earned an M.S. in Evolutionary Biology and a Ph.D. in Animal Biology at
Sapienza University, Rome.
Marco's research in the lab was focused on regulatory, gene expression, and epigenomic evolution in primates.
Marco is now working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
at Jefferson University.
Visit Marco’s lab webpage
here.
Minal Caliskan Ph.D., Post-doctoral fellow
Minal obtained a B.S. in Molecular Biology and Genetics from
Boğaziçi University (2007). She completed her Ph.D. in
Human Genetics
at the University of Chicago (2013), where she worked on genotype by
environment interactions that influence asthma and gene expression under
the supervision of
Dr. Carole Ober. Minal's research in the Brown lab
focused on epigenetic fine-mapping of complex trait associated loci in the human liver. She was supported by a Penn IBI fellowship,
was a semi-finalist for the Charles J. Epstein trainee award, and was awarded the the ASHG Cotterman Award in 2019.
She is now a human geneticist at Bristol-Myers Squibb.
YoSon Park Ph.D., Post-doctoral fellow
YoSon earned a B.S. in Microbiology and Immunology as well as a Ph.D. in Human Genetics from the
University of Miami.
As a Ph.D. student she worked with Dr. Margaret Pericak-Vance, developing and applying methods to understand the
genetic basis of neuropsychiatric phenotypes. YoSon's research focused on characterizing the causal
role of regulatory variation in human complex traits. She is now a post-doctoral fellow with
Casey Greene at Penn.
Katherine Aracena, PREP scholar
Katie received a B.A. in Biology from the University of Virginia in 2016, where she worked in the lab of Dr. Benjamin Blackman.
From 2016 to 2017, Katie was a
PREP scholar in the Brown lab.
Her research focused on functionally characterizing human specific cis-regulatory elements in the liver.
She is now a Ph.D. student in the lab of
Luis Barreiro in the
Department of Human Genetics at the University of Chicago.
Julian Segert, PREP scholar
Julian obtained a B.A. in Biology from
Swarthmore College in 2017.
He completed his honor's thesis research in the Brown lab and has continued on in the lab as a post-baccalaureate student in
Penn's
PREP program.
His research focused on identifying genetic variants associated with histone modification state in the liver.
He is now a Ph.D. student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences graduate program at Harvard University.
Eric Mendoza, SUIP scholar
Eric was a Penn
SUIP scholar in 2019.
Eric's research focused on identifying causal regulatory variants that underlie complex trait variation.
He is currently an undergraduate at Rutgers University.
Interested in joining our team?
Contact Casey and we can talk shop.