Meet the members of the Basil Lab!

Maria Basil

Maria is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Medicine. Maria is a Pulmonary and Critical Care Physician and dedicated to taking care of patients with chronic lung disease. Maria earned her MD and Ph.D. here at Penn as part of the Best MSTP in the galaxy^™, where she studied mechanisms that governed cell fate decisions in T lymphocytes in the laboratory of Dr. Steven Reiner. She then completed her Internal Medicine Residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital before returning to Penn for Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship. During her fellowship, she worked in the laboratory of Dr. Edward Morrisey. Before all that, she grew up in Buffalo, New York. She does not miss the snow. She is still sad when the Bills lose. 

She now runs her own laboratory within the Penn-CHOP Lung Biology Institue (LBI) and the Penn Cardiovascular Institute (CVI), and she is also a member of the Penn Institute of Regenerative Medicine (IRM). In the LBI, Maria runs the Human Lung Tissue Bank. She is also a mentor in the Penn MSTP program and a member of the Cell and Molecular Biology Graduate Group in DSRB and G&E. 

When she is not seeing patients or doing science, Maria can often be found reading yet another historical fiction novel, listening to Taylor Swift, enjoying coffee, tea of all varieties, or one of the many awesome restaurants near her South Philly home. Most of her time, however, is spent with her husband and two young boys, watching toddler soccer games, and helping to assemble Legos.

Ana Nottingham

Ana is the first research associate of the Basil Lab and what an amazing ride it has been! 

Ana is a Philadelphia native who left briefly to attend Davidson where she majored in Chemistry and was a member of the Division 1 Diving team. Ana eventually turned her passions toward science and medicine, and has been working in the laboratory trying to untangle the transcriptional regulation of the cells of the human respiratory airways. In her free time Ana enjoys drinking bubble tea and playing with her dog, Hazel.

Andrew Peterson

Andrew comes to Philadelphia from North Carolina where he was a lab manager for Dr. Adam Akerman and worked on mouse models of aortic disease. Andrew now helps Maria manage the chaos of the Basil lab (which she mostly inflicts and then he fixes) while working on strategies to understand cell fate relationships in the distal human airways. In his free time Andrew enjoys exploring Philadelphia bakeries and coffee shops with his boyfriend, Drew.

Mijeong Kim

Mijeong, a postdoctoral fellow co-advised by Dr. Maria Basil and Dr. Edward Morrisey, majored in Nutrition in South Korea. Intrigued by the regulation of gene expression and cell identity during her studies, she pursued fundamental biology, earning her PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from The University of Texas at Austin. Under Dr. Jonghwan Kim, she focused on transcriptional regulations in human placenta development. Currently, Mijeong explores transcriptional regulators and mechanisms during lung regeneration. In her free time, she enjoys baking and exploring cafes.

Dominique Doyle

Dominique joined the Basil lab as a rotating grad student from Penn’s Cell and Molecular Biology PhD Program with a concentration in Developmental, Stem Cell, and Regenerative Biology (CAMB DSRB). As a New Jersey native, she came here directly from undergrad as a Science and Technology: Molecular Biology major with experience as a research assistant in Dr. Matthew Niepielko’s lab. She has an interest in identifying cell fates and characterizing differentiation mechanisms behind progenitor cell types, working closely with Ana for her rotation. In her free time Dominique enjoys traveling, trying new restaurants, and spending time with her two cats - Appa and Momo.

Yifan Yang

Yifan joined the Basil lab as a bioinformatician. Before coming to Philadelphia, she earned her Ph.D. in Computational Biology from Purdue University. She is broadly interested in applying computational methods to solve medical problems. She is now working on a mitochondria tracing project using scRNA technology, trying to understand the cell fate transitioning in lung disease patients. In her free time, she enjoys swimming and jogging with her 14-year-old Jack Russell!

Apoorva Babu

Apoorva is a bioinformatic specialist within the Penn Lung Biology Institute who works with the Basil lab on various single cell and bulk sequencing projects. She enjoys coffee and sending time with her daughter, who sometimes, but not often, likes to sleep at night.