Weljie Lab

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Lab Members

Principal Investigator

Aalim Weljie, Ph.D.

Aalim joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in May 2012 after relocating from the University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada). Aalim’s research interests include: circadian and sleep metabolomics; clinical and diagnostic metabolic profiling with specific applications to cancer; metabolomics applications to environmental toxicology; and the development of state-of-the-art metabolomics technologies and protocols with nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and liquid chromatography – mass spectrometry (LC-MS) with clinical and translational research applications.

Current Members

Arjun Sengupta, Ph.D.

Senior Research Investigator
Arjun joined the lab after completing his PhD from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research on NMR metabolomic investigation of malaria infection. Arjun's research interest is metabolic response to sleep deprivation and clinical sleep disorders. He uses high resolution NMR spectroscopy and targeted UPLC-MS based metabolomics strategies to address the link between phenotypes such as metabolic disorder, aging and sleep.

Ashley Woolfork, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Researcher
Ashley joined the Weljie lab in August 2021 after completing her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. Ashley’s research interest includes the use of mass spectrometry imaging to understand the effects of a functional circadian clock on brain metabolites associated with neurodegeneration.

Farheen Akhtar, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Researcher
Farheen completed her Ph.D in Biotechnology under the supervision of Prof. Asad, U. Khan, India. During her Ph.D. studies, she focused on an approach to control multi-drug resistance infection using Nano-photodynamic therapy both in vitro and in vivo. As a researcher, Farheen is well acquainted with various modern techniques, mammalian cell culture, animal handling and experiments, nanoparticle chemistry/or therapeutic development. Her current research interest in the Weljie lab is on examining temporal changes in metabolic homeostasis through the translational research spectrum. This includes work with Drosophila, mouse models, and ultimately humans.

Paula Haynes, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Researcher
Paula completed her PhD in the lab of Leslie Griffith at Brandeis University working on interactions between Drosophila sleep and memory circuitry and is currently completing a post-doc with Amita Sehgal and Aalim Weljie. Her research goal is to understand how differences in neuronal and glial phospholipid and mitochondrial metabolism change during sleep vs wake to promote a metabolic-homeostatic function of sleep. She is also interested in understanding how changes in sleep-wake brain metabolism affects different phases of neuronal plasticity to promote memory consolidation or diseases such as epilepsy and neurodegeneration, when misregulated.

Christopher Goudarzi

Master's of Chemical Sciences Candidate
Christopher received his Bachelors of Science in Biology from High Point University. He joined the lab in 2021 as a Master’s of Chemical Sciences (MCS) candidate in the biological chemistry concentration. Caspian’s research aims to develop at-home testing for diseases that are linked to metabolite alterations by determining the best surfaces and solvents for the detection of these biomolecules via DESI-MS.

Xinyao Zhou

Masters of Biotechnology Candidate
Xinyao received her Bachelor’s of Engineering in Bioengineering from Northeastern University of China. She joined the lab in 2022 as a master’s of biotechnology candidate in biomedical technology track. Her research interest includes using NMR, LCMS and DESI methods to identify the potential biomarkers of beta-thalassemia patients of different diagnosis and iron-chelation treatments for the early detection of thalassemia and prediction for the response of iron overload treatments.

Elijah Mugabe

Undergraduate Researcher - Summer 2022
Elijah is a rising senior from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. As a chemistry major, he wants to expand his level of knowledge in pharmacology and incorporate them into the medicinal chemistry field. This summer, Elijah is working with the Weljie Lab to explore sleep deprivation using metabolomics and lipidomics. His project focused on metabolite profiling of blood samples through LC-MS data in order to find differences in people who are susceptible or resistant to sleep deprivation, as well as providing validation on the methodology of how blood samples were taken.

Tim Burke

Undergraduate Researcher - Summer 2021
Tim is an undergraduate student at Franklin & Marshall College (Class of '22) double majoring in Neuroscience and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology with a minor in French. After completing his bachelor’s degree, Tim hopes to attend medical school and pursue a career as a physician-scientist. His current research interests include neurodegenerative and autoimmune disorders, as well as mechanisms of cancer metastasis. This summer, Tim is working with the Weljie lab and specifically Dr. Arjun Sengupta on LC-MS profiling of plasma samples taken from experimental subjects to assess metabolic markers of sleep deprivation.

Stanley Chen

Undergraduate Researcher - Summer 2021
Stanley is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in biochemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences. Stanley is interested in pursuing a career in Pharmacology and during his summer research experience would like to explore many topics and opportunities within the field of biochemistry, biology, and chemistry. Stanley’s summer project involves collecting and organizing data from patients to observe the impact of COVID-19 infection on metabolism.

Ricardo Velázquez-Aponte

Undergraduate Researcher - Summer 2021
Ricardo is an undergraduate student from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez majoring in Industrial Biotechnology, and plans to pursue graduate studies in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. This summer, Ricardo joined the Weljie lab as part of the Summer Undergraduate Internship Program (SUIP). He is working with Lisa Bottalico, Ph.D., in assessing the impact of endocrine-disrupting chemicals on mammalian circadian rhythms.

Andrew Briskin

Undergraduate Researcher - Summer 2019, 2020
Andrew Briskin is an undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania (Class of ’21) who joined the Weljie Lab in the Spring of 2019. He is a Health and Societies major with a Chemistry minor and plans to attend medical school. Andrew’s research interests include environmental toxicology with a specific focus on the impact of endocrine disrupting chemicals and other toxins on cellular metabolism and function of the circadian clock.

Y Dang

Undergraduate Researcher - Summer 2020
Y is a rising senior from Franklin & Marshall College. As a chemistry major who has taken several biology courses, Y is interested in medical research that integrates both chemistry and biology applications. This summer, she is working with the Weljie lab and specifically Dr. Arjun Sengupta to study metabolomics in the context of sleep deprivation. Her summer project involves working on NMR profiling of blood samples taken from experimental subjects to assess variation in metabolic markers as a function of sensitivity to sleep deprivation and to identify some novel indicators of sleep deprivation.

Neehal Hussein

Undergraduate Researcher - Summer 2020
Neehal is a student in the College of Arts and Sciences' Class of 2023 at the University of Pennsylvania. He currently intends to double major in mathematics and computer science and looks to bring these skills to the Weljie lab. During his summer research, and hopefully into the future, Neehal would like to improve his data analysis skills in R and Python by assisting in standardization, consolidation, and modification in the processing of metabolomics datasets that result from procedures that are commonplace in the lab, including polar MS, NMR, and lipidomics.

Alumni

Lisa Bottalico — Human Health Risk Assessor, EPA Region 3

Dania Malik — Consultant, Boston Consulting Group

Aiwen Tan — Postdoctoral Fellow, Siryaporn Lab, University of California, Irvine

Sumita Garai — Postdoctoral Fellow, Shen Lab, University of Pennsylvania

Saikumari Krishnaiah — Research scientist, Intertek Chemical & Material Testing Analysis

Seth Rhoades — Managing member of Fulgens Consulting, LLC; Healthcare data scientist at Careignition, LLC

Barry Slaff — Software development engineer, Amazon Web Services

Subhankar Chaterjee — Assistant Professor, Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Dharamsala

Dmitri Berbasov — Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Stockton University

Emily Mackay — Resident in General Surgery, University of British Colombia

Ngoc Ha Dang — Research Specialist, University of Calgary

Gavin Duggan — Software Engineer, Google

Omair Sarfaraz — Resident Physician, Internal Medicine, McMaster University

Julia Jordan — Environmental Planner at TransCanada

Nicolas Tambellini — R&D Software Developer at Attabiotics Inc.

Yarrow McConnell — Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery, University of British Colombia

Farshad Farshidfar — Postdoctoral Scholar in Cancer Computational Genomics, Standford University

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