Recruitment Ambassadors

Jorge Alvarez, Ph.D.

Juan Alvarez, Ph.D.

Nick Balderston, Ph.D.

Dr. Balderston is an experimental psychologist focusing on anxiety. His research uses psychophysiology, neuroimaging, and neuromodulation to develop and test brain-behavior hypotheses aimed at understanding the mechanisms that mediate clinical anxiety. Prior to joining the CNDS faculty, Dr. Balderston was a postdoctoral fellow in the NIMH Intramural Research Program working with Christian Grillon.

Yoseph Barash, Ph.D.

Dr. Barash's (he/him) is affiliated with the Cell and Molecular Biology (Genetics and Epigenetics) and Genomics & Computational Biology Graduate Groups. His research focuses on the intersection of Computer Science, Genomics and Genetics, focusing on RNA processing as it is applied to human health and disease. He joined the Recruitment Ambassadors because he believes it is important to level the playing field and give a chance to talented individuals from less fortunate backgrounds.

Kara Bernstein, Ph.D.

Seema Bhatnagar, Ph.D.

Dr. Bhatnagar's research aims to further the understanding of the neural basis of individual differences in response to stressful experiences. This includes identifying neural substrates that produce resiliency or vulnerability to the effects of stress and determining treatments to mitigate vulnerability and to promote resiliency through both preclinical and translational studies.

Andres Blanco, Ph.D.

Prof. Andres Blanco attended Cornell University and earned his B.A. with a double major in Biological Sciences and Philosophy in 2005. He earned his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at Princeton University in 2011 after completing his thesis in the molecular and genomic basis of breast cancer metastasis. He then performed his postdoc where he studied chromatin biology and cancer epigenetics in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School and the Division of Newborn Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. He started his independent laboratory as an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania in 2018. His laboratory studies the epigenetic regulation of cell fate decisions in cancers such as acute myeloid leukemia (AML) using a combination of biochemistry, epigenomics, bioinformatics, mouse models of cancer.

Julie Blendy, Ph.D.

Akiva Cohen, PhD

Dr. Cohen (he/him) is affiliated with the Neuroscience Graduate Group. The Cohen Lab employs behavioral and electrophysiological techniques to understand circuit alterations that underlie and contribute to cognitive and memory impairment associated with mild traumatic brain injury. One of his hobbies is to climb mountains for fun. 

Michelle Denburg, Ph.D.

Michelle Denburg, MD, MSCE, is board certified in pediatric nephrology and is director of Research for the Division of Nephrology at CHOP. She is an associate professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology and Senior Scholar in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She is a faculty member of the Clinical Futures, a CHOP Research Institute Center of Emphasis. She is an Attending Physician in the Cancer Survivorship Program and the CHOP-Penn Glomerular Clinic.

Cesar de la Fuente, Ph.D.

Ahmara (Mara) Gibbons Ross, Ph.D.

Dr. Ross is an Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at the Scheie Eye Institute and Neurology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) and a member of the Glaucoma and Neuro-Ophthalmology Service. She received her BA degree in Chemistry at Bryn Mawr College and earned both an M.F. and a Ph.D. in molecular pharmacology and structural biology at Thomas Jefferson University. Dr. Ross’s studies focus on retinal ganglion cell (RGC) damage and mechanisms of cell death that occur during optic nerve damage from stretch and elevated intraocular pressure conditions that occur in glaucoma.

Kathryn (Kate) Hamilton, Ph.D.

Dr. Hamilton (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Gastroenterology, Liver, and Nutrition at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Perelman School of Medicine. She has a long-standing interest in physiological and pathophysiological processes of the intestine and colon. Her laboratory focuses broadly on elucidating novel paradigms of post-transcriptional regulation of intestinal diseases including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). When she is not working, she enjoys hiking, biking, and exploring the vibrant city of Philadelphia with her family.

Jorge Henao-Mejia, Ph.D.

Jorge Henao-Mejia is an Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his medical degree at the University Of Antioquia. His research interests are Pathology, Immunobiology, Microbiology, Immune Cells, Chronic Inflammation, Gene Expression, Cloning, Genomics, Electrophoresis, Sequencing, DNA Sequencing, Western Blot Analysis, and RNA Extraction.

De'Broski R. Herbert

Dr. Herbert (he/him) is a mucosal immunologist who has a long-standing interest in parasites, specifically parasitic worms. His lab has a major focus on the cytokine interleukin 33 and we study barrier sites. including the skin, lung and intestine. There is a broad interest in Type 2 immunity. He became a Recruitment Ambassador because he is committed to enhancing the experience of diverse students

Rob Lee, Ph.D.

Robert J. Lee has a Bachelors of Science in Molecular Biology from the University of Pittsburgh and PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from The University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Lee’s graduate work focused on lung physiology and cystic fibrosis (CF). He studied how submucosal exocrine gland cells secrete the fluid that lines and hydrates the surface of the airway. He assisted with identifying key molecular components of this process as well ways to potentially enhance fluid secretion in CF lungs.

Maayan Levy, Ph.D.

The Levy lab focuses on the biology of intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) and their role in treating multifactorial human disease. IECs form a thin layer of individual cells separating the extremely distinct milieus of the gastrointestinal lumen and the mucosal lamina propria.

David Merrick, Ph.D.

David Merrick, MD/PhD completed undergraduate studies at the Johns Hopkins University, then earned his MD and PhD at Yale University in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Caplan. During his graduate training he studied the molecular dynamics of PKD1, the protein mutated in Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease (ADPKD).  Targeted capture of the cleaved intracellular signaling domain of this large ciliary membrane protein revealed that it translocated to the nucleus and regulated the activity of the Wnt and CHOP signaling pathways via interactions with a transcriptional co-activator p300.  As part of this work, he developed a 3D-organoid culturing system that facilitate the in vitro manipulation of kidney cysts, as well as adapting a zebrafish model of ADPKD to study the in vivo role the PDK1 signaling domain. Subsequent investigations revealed an interaction between PKD1 and TAZ1 to regulate skeletogenesis.

Mustafa Mir, Ph.D.

Dr. Mir develops and applies advanced fluorescence microscopy and single molecule imaging methods to study the dynamics of nuclear organization and transcriptional regulation during early embryonic development.

Todd Ridky MD.,Ph.D.

Dr. Ridky (he/him) uses his clinical experience as a dermatologist physician scientist to help inspire the research questions in his lab. Among other things, the Ridky Lab is working to understand why females generally have better cancer outcomes than males. They use genetic and pharmacologic approaches to define mechanisms by which biologic sex influences cancer pathobiology.

Marylyn Ritchie, Ph.D.

Liz Rhoades, Ph.D.

Dr Rhoades have an undergraduate degree in physics with a Ph.D. and post-doctoral training in biophysics, focusing on protein folding and aggregation. Current research in her lab is focused on understanding structural plasticity in both functional and disease-associated roles of intrinsically disordered proteins. They work on several different proteins in parallel which allows us to generate specific insights into the individual proteins as well to determine more general principals relevant to functional mechanisms of this class of proteins. The primary experimental approach is single molecule fluorescence. A key feature of this technique is that it allows us to make quantitative assessments of our systems in biologically relevant interactions that are challenging to access by more traditional structural methods.

Alisa Stephens-Shields, PhD

Dr. Stephens-Shields (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Her research focuses on flexible and efficient analysis of data from cluster-randomized trials and other extensions of causal inference methodology to enhance the design and analysis of clinical trials. She also works in the development of patient-reported outcomes to inform population-appropriate trial endpoints. Dr. Stephens-Shields collaborates in several areas, including pediatrics, chronic pain, pharmacoepidemiology, and behavioral economics.

Eric Witze, Ph.D.