Jain Lab

Rajan Jain
PI
 jainr@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Raj is a physician-scientist, practicing cardiologist, and proud Berkeley alum. All of his post-medical school clinical training and post-doctoral research training was completed at Penn. When he's not in the lab, Raj loves to watch the NFL and help his daughters tend to their garden. Also, he's always up for a conversation about 90s hip-hop or the food scene in Philly. Check out a short interview he was a part of discussing his background and the lab. See below if you're interested in joining the team. 

Parisha Shah
Senior Research Investigator
 parisha@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Parisha is a Senior Research Investigator — she's the one who people go to figure out how to get things done. She's a graduate of Juniata College and the U. of Chicago and recently completed a post-doc in Shelley Berger's laboratory. Scientifically, she's interested in how nuclear architecture informs heart development and disease. ​When she’s not at lab, you can find Parisha chasing down her children, cooking, or frantically trying to finish a book in time for book club. 

Qiaohong Wang
Research Specialist
 qiaohong@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Qiaohong is a Research Specialist in the lab — our resident expert on all matters related to cell culture, mouse genetics, in vitro differentiation and more. Qiaohong has yet to meet a cell line or mouse that won’t behave in her capable hands. She was formerly in Jon Epstein's lab and has worked with (or rather, put up with) Raj for several years. She's never afraid to take on a new, wild project!

Ashley Karnay
Graduate Student
 Ashley.Karnay@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Ashley is a graduate student who came east from California. After completing her masters at Drexel University, she's pursuing her PhD at Penn. She's a part of the Genetics and Epigenetics graduate group. She tells Raj all the places to hit up in Hawaii — and has caught a 135 lb fish in Alaska!! Ashley was initially awarded a T32 slot, but most recently is being supported by an F31 award from the NHLBI. Ashley's working on understanding how specific transcriptional mechanisms maintain and/or establish spatial positioning of the genome. 

Zach Gardner
MD/PhD student
 Zachary.Gardner@Pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Zach is an MD/PhD student who completed his undergraduate at Yale. After undergrad he worked in the Zhang laboratory at the Broad. He's got quite the green thumb as he's successfully resuscitated multiple succulents that were on the way out. Zach is figuring out the mechanisms underlying how cell-type specific genome folding is established using imaging! Zach is supported by the Penn Developmental Biology T32 and was recently awarded an AHA pre-doctoral fellowship. 

Kaitlyn Shen
MD/PhD student
 Kaitlyn.Shen@Pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Kaitlyn is an MD/PhD student at Penn who completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago and is originally from CT. She's a phenomenal baker - and usually Raj's girls eat all the cookies Kaitlyn cooks before anyone can get to them. Kaitlyn is deciphering the mechanical and epigenetic inputs which maintain spatial positioning of the genome. Kaitlyn was recently awarded an AHA predoctoral fellowship.

Ricardo Linares Saldana
Postdoctoral Fellow
 Ricardo.linaresaldana@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Ricardo is a postdoctoral fellow in the lab. Ricardo's graduate work (at Penn!) focused on how nuclear architecture influences cardiogenesis. Ricardo completed his undergraduate studies at Johns Hopkins and worked at the NIH prior to coming to Penn. When Ricardo isn't bashing a dataset, he is walking his dog, playing with his daughter, or trying his hand at kombucha. Ricardo is the lab’s resident photographer and takes joy in reminding Raj how old he is. 

Krishna Haridhasapavalan
Postdoctoral Fellow
 Krishna.Haridhasapavalan@Pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Krishna is a postdoctoral fellow from India who completed his graduate studies at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India. At IIT Guwahati, Krishna studied how to reprogram fibroblasts into cardiac myocytes using new methods he developed. In the Jain lab, Krishna has gone all in on cohesin biology and identifying new factors which regulate genome folding. Outside the lab, Krishna likes to give Raj a hard time about Mercedes F1....Krishna is a big Max Verstappen / Red Bull fan...

Emily Shields
Bioinformaticist
 shiemily@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Emily is a bioinformaticist in the lab. Emily completed her PhD with Roberto Bonasio at Penn where she studied how epigenetics influence ant behavior. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Germany, but returned to Penn to be a staff bioinformaticist for multiple labs. In her free time, Emily enjoys biking around the city. 

Nikhita Bolar
Postdoctoral Fellow

Bailey Koch-Bojalad
Postdoctoral Fellow

Wonho Kim
Postdoctoral Fellow

Gwang Hyeon Eom (Eom)
Visiting Faculty

Rachel Yang
Sarnoff Fellow

Garrett Santini
MTR student

Nick Rizer
Medical student

Liam Stanton
Undergraduate student

Joshua Rhoades
Bioinformatician

Richard Abdill
Bioinformaticist