PEOPLE

Viswanathan Lab Team

We are a young and vibrant lab and seek to grow our team with creative and enthusiastic individuals from diverse prior backgrounds. I am deeply committed to ensuring rigorous training, productive mentorship, and an inspired scientific experience for all members of the lab. Research has borne out the value of mentorship in academia and I have been fortunate to benefit from fantastic mentorship as an undergraduate, graduate student, and postdoctoral fellow. I am committed to the mentorship and success of all trainees in their next endeavor, whether that be in academia, industry, or another path.

Principal Investigator

Srinivas R. Viswanathan, M.D., Ph.D.
Principal Investigator

Hometown: Tenafly, NJ
Twitter | PubMed

Dr. Viswanathan is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an attending medical oncologist in the Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University. He subsequently received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School, doing his graduate work in the lab of Dr. George Q. Daley and his medical training in the Harvard Medical School/MIT Health Sciences and Technology program. He completed residency training in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital and a fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. His postdoctoral fellowship was with Dr. Matthew Meyerson at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Broad Institute.

Postdoctoral Fellows

Shatha AbuHammad, B.D.S, M.S., Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Postdoctoral fellowship, DoD Kidney Cancer Research Program

Hometown: Amman, Jordan
Profiles: Google Scholar | LinkedIn

Shatha received a B.D.S degree in Dentistry and M.S. degree in Pharmacology from the University of Jordan. She then received her Ph.D from the University of Melbourne, working in the lab of Professor Grant McArthur at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center, where she stayed on as a postdoctoral researcher before coming to Dana-Farber. Her work focused on studying the mechanisms of acquired-resistance to cancer therapeutics.

Selected Publications:

S. AbuHammad, et al., Regulation of PRMT5–MDM4 axis is critical in the response to CDK4/6 inhibitors in melanoma. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 116, 17990–18000 (2019).

Mingkee Achom, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Hometown: Imphal, India
Profiles: Google Scholar | Twitter

Mingkee earned her Ph.D. in Life Sciences from the University of Warwick, UK. Her doctoral work, in the groups of Miriam Gifford and Sascha Ott investigated symbioses with rhizobium bacteria and root development in legume plants. She also received her MSc. degree in Agricultural Science (Plant Biotechnology) from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, India with research focused on the characterization of seed micronutrient content for marker-assisted breeding in common bean. Prior to joining Dana-Farber in 2021, she worked as a postdoctoral associate on potato-nematode interactions in Dr. Xiaohong Wang’s lab at Cornell.

Selected Publications:

M Achom*, P Roy*, B Lagunas*, E Picot, L Richards, R Bonyadi-Pour, AJ Pardal, L Baxter, B Richmond, N Aschauer, E Fletcher, M Rowson, J Blackwell, C Rich-Griffin, KS Mysore, J Wen, S Ott, IA Carré, ML Gifford. Plant circadian clock control of Medicago truncatula nodulation via regulation of Nodule Cysteine-Rich peptides. Journal of Experimental Botany, 2021
B Lagunas*, M Achom*, R Bonyadi-Pour*, A J Pardal*, B L Richmond, C Sergaki, S Vázquez, P Schäfer, S Ott, J Hammond, ML Gifford. Regulation of resource partitioning coordinates nitrogen and rhizobia responses and autoregulation of nodulation in Medicago truncatula Molecular Plant, 2019

*, equal contribution

Ziad Bakouny, M.D., M.Sc.
Postdoctoral Fellow / Medical Resident

Hometown: Beiruit, Lebanon
Profiles: Google Scholar | Twitter | LinkedIn

Ziad received his MSc degree in Biomechanics and Medical Imaging in 2016 and his MD degree in 2018 from the University of Saint-Joseph in Beirut, Lebanon. His pre-doctoral research focused on subject-specific modelling of human skeletal structures and movement using infrared and X-ray-based static and dynamic imaging. Ziad joined Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 2018 to work on kidney cancer genomics and has been co-mentored by Dr. Toni Choueiri and Dr. Eliezer Van Allen. Ziad began his residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in June 2021.

Selected Publications:

Bakouny Z, Braun DA, Shukla SA, Pan W, Gao X, Hou Y, Flaifel A, Tang S, Bosma-Moody A, He MX, Vokes N, Nyman J, Xie W, Nassar AH, Abou Alaiwi S, Flippot R, Bouchard G, Steinharter JA, Nuzzo PV, Ficial M, Sant'Angelo M, Forman J, Berchuck JE, Dudani S, Bi K, Park J, Camp S, Sticco-Ivins M, Hirsch L, Baca SC, Wind-Rotolo M, Ross-Macdonald P, Sun M, Lee GM, Chang SL, Wei XX, McGregor BA, Harshman LC, Genovese G, Ellis L, Pomerantz M, Hirsch MS, Freedman ML, Atkins MB, Wu CJ, Ho TH, Linehan WM, McDermott DF, Heng DYC, Viswanathan SR, Signoretti S, Van Allen EM, Choueiri TK. Integrative molecular characterization of sarcomatoid and rhabdoid renal cell carcinoma. Nat Commun. 2021 Feb 5;12(1):808. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-21068-9.
Bakouny Z, Sadagopan A, Ravi P, Metaferia NY, Li J, Tang S, Denize T, Garner ER, Gao X, Hirsch L, Steinharter JA, Bouchard G, Walton E, Labaki C, Dudani S, Gan C-L, Sethunath V, Imamovic A, Ricker C, Vokes NI, Nyman J, Park J, Hirsch MS, Haq R, Mary Lee G-S, McGregor BA, Chang SL, Feldman AS, Wu CJ, McDermott DF, Heng DYC, Signoretti S, Van Allen EM, Choueiri TK, Viswanathan SR. Integrative Clinical and Molecular Characterization of Translocation Renal Cell Carcinoma. bioRxiv. 2021 Apr 15. doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.14.439908

Prathyusha Konda, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Hometown: Andra Pradesh, India
Profiles: Google Scholar | Twitter | LinkedIn

Prathyusha received a B.Tech. in Biotechnology from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (India) with research experiences in Cancer Biology and Epigenetics. Subsequently, she received a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from Dalhousie University in Canada where her thesis work focused on enhancing mass spectrometry-based tumor antigen discovery platforms and developing novel immunogenic photodynamic therapies for melanoma, with an emphasis on T cell-mediated anticancer immune responses.

Selected Publications:

Murphy J*, Konda P*, Kowalewski DJ, Schuster H, Clements D, Kim Y, Cohen A M, Sharif T, Nielsen M, Stevanovic S, Lee P W & Gujar S. MHC-I Ligand Discovery Using Targeted Database Searches of Mass Spectrometry Data:Implications for T-Cell Immunotherapies. Journal of Proteome Research, 2017.
Konda P, Murphy J P, Gujar S. 2020. Improving MHC-I ligand identification by incorporating targeted searches of mass spectrometry data. Methods in Molecular Biology Bioinformatics, 2020.

Bingchen Li, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Hometown: Shandong, China
Profiles: LinkedIn

Bingchen received his B.S in Chemistry from Shandong Agricultural University. His undergraduate research was focused on developing electrochemical and photoelectrochemical biosensors. He completed his Ph.D. from Stony Brook University. His doctoral work, in the lab of Erwin London, focused on the effects of asymmetry on liposomal drug loading and delivery efficiency.

Selected Publications:

Li, Bingchen, and Erwin London. Preparation and drug entrapment properties of asymmetric liposomes containing cationic and anionic lipids. Langmuir 36, no. 42 (2020): 12521-12531.

Jiao Li, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Postdoctoral fellowship, National Cancer Center
Hometown: Changzhi, China
Profiles: Google Scholar

Jiao received her B.S in Resources and Development of Traditional Chinese Medicine from Shanxi Agricultural University in 2013. Her undergraduate research was focused on the antibacterial effects of Paulownia flower extract. She completed her Ph.D. from Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2019. Her doctoral work, in the lab of Hongjie Yao, focused on the effects of epigenetics and higher-order chromatin architecture on gene regulation and cell fate determination.

Selected Publications:

Jiao Li*, Kaimeng Huang*, Gongcheng Hu*, Isaac A. Babarinde, Yaoyi Li, Xiaotao Dong, Yu-Sheng Chen, Liping Shang, Wenjing Guo, Junwei Wang, Zhaoming Chen, Andrew P. Hutchins, Yun-Gui Yang, Hongjie Yao*: An alternative CTCF isoform antagonizes canonical CTCF occupancy and changes chromatin architecture to promote apoptosis. Nature Communications, 2019.

*, equal contribution

Research Associates

Harriet (Yuqianxun) Wu, B.S., M.S.
Research Associate

Hometown: Shanghai, China
Profiles: LinkedIn | Google Scholar

Harriet (Yuqianxun) graduated from Northeastern University with an MS and BS degrees in Bioengineering. Her concentration was Tissue & Cellular Engineering. She worked as an undergraduate researcher in Dr. Eduardo Sontag’s System Biology Lab applying mathematical modeling and computational biology to study the C. Elegans native intestinal microbiome. Harriet also worked with Dr. Erel Levine on her Masters project studying microbial co-cultures using deep reinforcement learning and dynamical control.

Danny Gallant, B.S.
Research Associate

Hometown: Boulder, CO
Profiles: LinkedIn

Danny received a B.S. degree from Wake Forest University where he majored in chemistry with a concentration of medicinal chemistry & drug discovery. He worked as a research assistant in Dr. Ulrich Bierbach's lab at Wake Forest where he studied platinum acridine drugs, a novel platinum chemotherapy agent which is being investigated in order to treat breast and lung cancers. Specifically, Danny investigated molecular mechanisms behind drug resistance and epigenetic silencing mechanisms in non-small cell lung cancer and triple negative breast cancer.

Students

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Qingru Xu
Masters Student

Hometown: Anhui, China
Profiles: Pubmed | LinkedIn

Qingru is a masters student at the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health, in the computational biology and quantitative genetics program. She received her B.S. degree in Bioinformatics from the University of Xi’an Jiaotong – Liverpool, China and University of Liverpool, UK. During her undergraduate research, she worked in the laboratory of Dr. Jia Meng studying post-transcriptional RNA modifications, such as N6-methyladenosine.

Ananthan Sadagopan
Undergraduate Research Associate

Hometown: Westborough, MA
Profiles: Google Scholar | Twitter | LinkedIn

Ananthan is an undergraduate at MIT planning to major in biology. He previously worked as a research assistant in Dr. Soldano Ferrone’s lab at MGH investigating mechanisms of HLA class I downregulation in cancer cells. In the Viswanathan Lab, his current work is related to the characterization of sex-specific alterations in cancers.

Emily Deng
Undergraduate Research Associate

Hometown: Rochester, MN

Emily is an undergraduate at Harvard planning to concentrate in History and Science with a secondary in Global Health and Health Policy. Her work in the Viswanathan Lab is focused on TFE3 gene fusions in translocation renal cell carcinoma.

Lab Alumni

Name
Marina Nogueira (mentored as postdoc/Instructor)
Stephen Tang
Emma Garner
Vidya Sethunath
Imran Nasim
Nebiyou Metaferia
Ali Ahmed