People
Elaine Lim, PhD, Principal Investigator
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Division of Innate Immunity
Elaine trained in Computer Science, Bioinformatics and Quantitative Genetics & Genomics during her undergraduate, Masters and PhD training. Subsequently, she worked on sequencing, gene editing and stem cell-based technologies with Dr. George Church at Harvard Medical School. Her current research interests include the use of multiplexing/demultiplexing and human stem cell derived systems to understand the role of disease-associated genetic variants and host-exposome interactions in common neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.D
Co-Prinicipal Investigator
Rigel Chan, PhD
Rigel started his career as a software engineer after graduating from the School of Computing (B.Comp) at the National University of Singapore. Soon after, he applied for a graduate fellowship to study Bioinformatics at the School of Medicine and graduated with a Masters of Science in Bioinformatics. Rigel then proceeded to continue his graduate education by studying Genetics and Genomics at Harvard University under the supervision of Professor Joel Hirschhorn. Chan, PhD, completed his postdoc research in Functional Genomics at Professor George Church's Lab at the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. Rigel Chan has a deep interest in applying quantitative approaches using in-vitro models to further genetics research. His research is interdisciplinary encompassing both bioinformatics (Algorithm Design, Statistical Analysis, Data Processing, etc) as well as wet-lab experimental approaches (Tissue Culture, DNA and RNA sequencing, Gene Editing, etc).
Graduate Student
Khanh Tran
Khanh is a third-year graduate student in the Lim/Chan lab within the BMB program. Her research focuses on the toxicology of environmental factors, particularly cadmium, and its impact on Alzheimer's Disease pathology using cerebral organoid model. She is also interested in employing single-cell long-read sequencing to explore the transcriptomic effects of cadmium on AD pathology. When she is not in the lab, she enjoys knitting, painting, and exploring Boston.
Graduate Student
Adrian Orszulak
Adrian is a PhD student in the Lim/Chan Lab. He graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 2022 with a BS in Biology & Biotechnology and Bioinformatics & Computational Biology. He is currently examining HSV-1 infection of cerebral organoids and emergent AD-like pathology in the context of neuroinflammation and innate immunity. Outside the lab, Adrian enjoys playing water polo, cooking, and playing board games.
Graduate Student
Samantha Chigas
Samantha is a second-year PhD student in the Lim/Chan lab. She is working on identifying cell-type specific effects and associated genetic changes of HSV-1 infection on cerebral organoids and how these can lead to Alzheimer’s disease. Sam graduated from Salem State University with a BS in biomedical sciences in 2017 and worked for Alnylam Pharmaceuticals as an associate scientist in CNS research up until she came to UMass Chan. In her free time, Sam enjoys spending time at the beach, going to concerts and relaxing with her cat, Herman.
Lab Personnel
Nathaniel Barton
Nathaniel is a bioinformatician in the Lim/Chan lab. He graduated from Brigham Young University in 2021 with a BS in Genetics, Genomics, & Biotechnology, an additional major in Bioinformatics, and minors in Computer Science and Molecular Biology. Nathaniel's research interests focus on applying multi-omic datasets to investigate human disease. In the Lim/Chan lab, Nathaniel's work has centered on developing an unbiased multiplex antibody profiling pipeline that has been used to identify disease-associated microbial and autoantigenic epitopes in Multiple Sclerosis and Alzheimer's Disease. He also provides bioinformatic support for projects investigating the role of HSV-1 infection in AD through analysis of flow cytometry and sequencing data generated by others in the lab. Outside the lab, Nathaniel enjoys reading fantasy novels, playing the piano and saxophone, and cooking.
Lab Personnel
Jon Sundstrom
Jon is a research associate in the Lim/Chan lab. His work is focused on examining cell-type specific changes in cerebral organoid cultures in response to infection with HSV-1 or influenza virus, and how these changes may or may not be indicative of Alzheimer’s disease. Previously, he worked as a research technician at McLean Hospital studying bioenergetic dysregulation in iPSC-derived neuronal cells from Alzheimer’s patients, as well as developing therapeutics for correcting this dysfunction. He holds a BS in biotechnology from the University of Rhode Island and graduated in 2021. In his free time, Jon enjoys playing the piano, cooking, and spending too much money on coffee.
Lab Personnel
Meagan Olson
Meagan has been a research associate in the Lim/Chan lab since June 2022. She is using flow cytometry to study how different cell types within cerebral organoids respond to HSV-1 infection and drug treatment. Meagan graduated from UMass Amherst in 2022 with a BS in biology and a BS in psychology-neuroscience. At UMass Amherst, she was an undergraduate research assistant in the Katz lab studying nudibranch neurobiology and behavior for 3 years. In her free time, Meagan enjoys dancing, collecting crystals, and watching bird videos with her cat, Asher.
Lab Personnel
Pepper Dawes
Pepper graduated from UT Austin with a BSc in computational biology in 2020, and has been working as a bioinformatician with the Lim Lab for 3 years handling analyses with existing bulk and emerging scRNA-Seq technologies, as well as data management. In their free time, they love to cook, bike, and find new trails to hike and explore.
Lab Personnel
Marcus Babiy
Marcus is a research associate in the Lim/Chan lab.
