Our Team
- Principal Investigator
- Staff Scientist
- Post-doctoral Fellows
- Graduate Students
- Research Staff
- Undergraduate Research Assistants
- Alumni
Principal Investigator
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Read More about Michael Gandal, MD/PhD
Michael Gandal, MD/PhD
Associate Professor
michael.gandal@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
Twitter
Dr. Gandal is the William & Noreen Hetznecker Associate Professor of Psychiatry and a member of the Lifespan Brain Institute at Penn Med and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). He holds secondary appointments in Genetics at Penn and Pediatrics (Division of Human Genetics) at CHOP. He received his BS in Engineering (biomedical computation) from Stanford University and his MD/PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania, using electrophysiology to investigate neural circuit dysfunction in mouse models of schizophrenia and autism. He completed his residency training in Psychiatry at the UCLA-Semel Institute and a postdoctoral fellowship in Neurogenetics, characterizing the genetic contributions to shared gene expression alterations in human brain across several major psychiatric disorders. Dr. Gandal directs a developmental brain genomics research laboratory which seeks to translate the genetic underpinnings of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders into concrete biological targets for therapeutic intervention and mechanistic understanding.
Staff Scientist
Post-doctoral Fellows
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Read More about Pan Zhang, PhD
Pan Zhang, PhD
Staff Research Associate
panzhang@g.ucla.edu
Pan received his B.S. in Biotechnology from Lanzhou University, China and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing, China. He is broadly interested in exploring functional genomics data to study the molecular mechanisms through which genetic variants contribute to complex traits. His current research focuses on understanding the link between common genome structural variants and psychiatric disorders. To do so, he mainly uses computational approaches to identify dysregulated endophenotypes at different levels. In his spare time, he enjoys reading and road trips.
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Read More about Miao Tang, MD/PhD
Miao Tang, MD/PhD
Post-doctoral Fellow
Miao.Tang@Pennmedicine.upenn.edu
Miao received her Medicine degree in Sun Yat-sen University, China and her Ph.D. in Medicine from Queen’s University Belfast, United Kingdom. Her current research focuses on understanding the susceptibility of cell types to psychiatric disorders in human brain, via integration of large-scale scRNA-seq atlases and population genetics studies. In her spare time, she enjoys swimming.
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Read More about Yeda Wu, MD/PhD
Yeda Wu, MD/PhD
Post-doctoral Fellow
Darren.Wu@Pennmedicine.upenn.edu
Yeda received his MD from Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-Sen University (SYSU) in China and his PhD in Statistical Genetics at the University of Queensland (UQ) in Australia under the supervision of Drs. Peter Visscher and Naomi Wray.
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Yunlong Ma, Ph.D.
Yunlong Ma, Ph.D.
Graduate Students
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Read More about Cindy Wen
Cindy Wen
Bioinformatics PhD student
cindy.wen@ucla.edu
Cindy received a BS from Cornell University in Computational Biology and is a member of the UCLA Bioinformatics Interdisciplinary PhD Program. She joined the Gandal UCLA lab in 2020. She is working to comprehensively characterize principles of gene regulation in the developing brain human and its relationship with genetic risk for neuropsychiatric GWAS.
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Read More about Michael Margolis
Michael Margolis
MSTP, Genetics & Genomics PhD Program
MPMargolis@mednet.ucla.edu
Michael received in BS in Computational and Systems Biology from UCLA and then matriculated in the MD/PhD Program at UCLA. He is jointly mentored by Dan Geschwind.
Research Staff
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Read More about Connor Jops
Connor Jops
Data analyst
Connor.Jops@Pennmedicine.upenn.edu
Connor graduated from UCLA in 2020 with a BS in Computational and Systems Biology. He is interested in cloud computing, long read sequencing, and running really really long distances.
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Read More about Daniel Vo, MS
Daniel Vo, MS
Data analyst
Daniel.Vo@Pennmedicine.upenn.edu
Daniel received his BS in Computational and Systems Biology from UCLA and a Masters in Bioinformatics. Daniel joined the Gandal lab as an undergraduate research assistant and has since stayed on as a full time Data Analyst. He is interested in machine learning, big data approaches to genomics, and living on the reverse light-dark cycle.
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Read More about Emma Kumagai, MS
Emma Kumagai, MS
Data analyst
mekumagai@ucla.edu
Originally from Japan, Emma received a BS and MS in Health Sciences from University of Tsukuba. Emma joined the lab in 2022 and has been working on a large-scale autism biobank GWAS project.
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Read More about Sarah Hayes
Sarah Hayes
Research coordinator
sarah.hayes@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
Sarah received a B.S. in Biology and Spanish from the University of Michigan. After years of working in industry, she joined the lab in 2023. Outside of her interest in the genetic basis of psychiatric disorders, she also enjoys distance running and studying languages.
Undergraduate Research Assistants
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Shravya Aparasu
Alumni
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Read More about Arjun Bhattacharya, PhD
Arjun Bhattacharya, PhD
Assistant Professor @ MD Anderson
abhattacharya3@mdanderson.org
Lab
[Arjun](https://arjun-bhattacharya.com/) was jointly mentored with Dr. [Bogdan Pasaniuc](https://bogdan.dgsom.ucla.edu/pages/). Arjun graduated with a PhD in Biostatistics from the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2020, supervised by Mike Love in Biostatistics and Melissa Troester in Epidemiology. Arjun is interested in developing statistical methods for genetic association and epidemiological studies and implement them to understand how biological heterogeneity influences health outcomes and disparities in cancer and neuropsychiatric disorders.
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Read More about Leanna Hernandez, Ph.D.
Leanna Hernandez, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor @ UCLA
leannahernandez@ucla.edu
Lab
Dr. Leanna Hernandez is a neuroscientist investigating how genetic and environmental factors impact neurodevelopmental trajectories and predispose to pediatric/adolescent-onset psychiatric disorders, including autism and schizophrenia. She received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Southern California (USC) and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her postdoctoral research in the Gandal Lab examines how genetic variants associated with cross-disorder psychiatric disease risk affect structural brain development and clinically-relevant phenotypes in >11,000 youth from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD). She employs a variety of methods including statistical genetics, magnetic resonance imaging, and behavioral phenotyping.
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Read More about Gil Hoftman, MD/PhD
Gil Hoftman, MD/PhD
Assistant Professor @ UCLA
ghoftman@mednet.ucla.edu
Lab
Dr. Gil Hoftman recently joined the UCLA Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Division as a Health Sciences Clinical Instructor. His goal is to become an independent investigator leading an innovative and prolific research program studying the molecular mechanisms underlying cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia, with an emphasis on understanding the cell and circuit specific developmental trajectories of these key molecular components. The underlying motivation for studying the development and dysfunction of cognitive control in schizophrenia is to improve patients’ lives by identifying biologically informed, innovative approaches to treat cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia and by ideally preventing or delaying the premorbid developmental lag in cognitive control and the onset of psychosis in people with schizophrenia. In particular, he is passionate about understanding complex brain disorders like schizophrenia by using integrative, complementary approaches. One strategy for understanding the pathophysiology of a multifaceted syndrome like schizophrenia is to study the normal development of affected brain circuitry central to the disorder. At UCLA, he plans to pursue studies of both typical and pathological neurodevelopment by leveraging novel, integrative neurobehavioral genetics and neuroimaging approaches.
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Read More about Ashok Patowary, PhD
Ashok Patowary, PhD
Project Scientist @ UCLA
ashokpatowary@g.ucla.edu
My current research focuses on using next-generation sequencing to characterize the neurogenetic underpinnings of psychiatric disorders including autism and schizophrenia. I am conducting experiments using single-cell and long-read RNA sequencing to understand alternative splicing changes in psychiatric disease brain. Prior to joining the Gandal Lab, I was a Senior Fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle, where my research focused on gene discovery in familial autism. I obtained my Ph.D. degree in Genomics from CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi India and Master’s from Tezpur University, Assam. I was born and brought up in Guwahati (Assam), India. I love traveling to places with natural beauty when I am have days off from work.
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Read More about Minsoo Kim, PhDMinsoo Kim, PhD
MSTP, PhD Genetics & Genomics 2022
Minsoo Kim, PhD
MSTP, PhD Genetics & Genomics 2022
Originally from South Korea, Minsoo received a BS in Applied & Computational Mathematics + Bioengineering from Caltech. He matriculated into the MSTP program at UCLA and joined the Gandal Lab in the Fall of 2018 as part of the Genetics and Genomics Program. He is currently interested in investigating the neuro-immune signaling pathway of neurodevelopmental diseases. In his pastime, he watches Tarantino movies while listening to Drake to get inspired.
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Read More about Chloe Yap, MD/PhDChloe Yap, MD/PhD
Visiting Fullbright Scholar, 2021
Chloe Yap, MD/PhD
Visiting Fullbright Scholar, 2021
Chloe is an MD/PhD student at the University of Queensland in Brisbane Australia. She is conducting her PhD with Jake Gratten and Naomi Wray investigating genomic biomarkers of ASD.
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Natalie Gong, MD/PhD
Psychiatry Resident @ MGH/McLean
PhD Rotation Students
- Shridhar Parthasarathy, Penn MSTP/GCB, 2024
- Makayla Reed, Penn GCB, 2024
- Minh Nguyen, Penn G+E, 2023
- Eren Kafadar, Penn MSTP/NGG, 2023
- Jennifer Grundman, UCLA/G+G
- Lauren Wagner, UCLA/NSIDP
- Kathleen O'Hora, UCLA/NSIDP
- Serena Hughes, UCLA/Bioinformatics
- Nick Bayley, UCLA/Bioinformatics
- Adam Alghalith, UCLA/MSTP
Undergraduate Alumni
- Ellen Tsai -- now PhD Student @ Vanderbilt
- Celine Ho -- now PhD student @ Johns Hopkins
- Nick Page -- now PhD student @ UCSF
- Diego de Alba -- now PhD student @ UCSB