People in our research group

This picture shows our research group in April 2022.

Front row, left to right: Harish Dhakal (MSc student), Tenoch Morales (MSc student), Kishore Basu (BSc thesis student), TJ Ayoub (BSc thesis student); Back row: Mojgan Ezadian (PhD student), Marwa Tuffaha (PhD student), Saranya Varakunan (undergraduate research awardee), Abby Kushnir (undergraduate research awardee), Lindi Wahl (PI).

This picture shows our research group in the fall term, 2017.

Left to right: Joshua LeClair (MSc student), Tyler Pattenden (PhD student), Jessica McNamara (BSc student), Mahnaz Rabbani (MSc student), Amjad Khan (PhD student), David Dick (PhD student). Being dropped: Daniel Sigal (MD student and research assistant).

This picture shows our research group in the summer term, 2016.

Back row (sitting): Alina Nadeem (MSc student), Mahnaz Rabbani (MSc student), Jennifer Reid (MSc student), Lindi Wahl (PI).
Middle row (standing): Amjad Khan (PhD student), Josh LeClair (MSc student), Tyler Pattenden (PhD student), David Dick (PhD student).
Front row: Qasim Ali (post-doc), Matt Betti (PhD student).

• Qasim Ali: Qasim is developing models of temperate phage, and interactions between prophage and bacterial resistance/immunity mechanisms.

• Matt Betti: Matt is currently interested in diseases affecting honeybee colonies, and their influence on colony collapse. Can the age distribution within a hive help us to distinguish whether disease or pesticides are threatening the colony?
• David Dick: David is using mathematical models to better understand a rich HIV dataset collected over 10 years in Uganda and Zimbabwe. Our hope is to reveal distinguishing characteristics of prevalent HIV subtypes.
• Mahnaz Rabbani: Mahnaz has been studying a particular type of mobile genetic element, mobile promoters. She has found that these elements are much more stable in promoter regions of the genome than in other regions.
• Jennifer Reid: Jennifer is looking at the survival of novel beneficial mutations in budding viruses. These mutations might help the virus jump to a new host species, resist antibiotic therapy, or adapt to climate change.
• Alina Nadeem: Alina is developing new models of prophage that include recombination between prophage and infecting phage. Prophage turn their hosts into a reservoir of viral genetic material, and recombination allows future generations of infecting phage to access this gene pool.
• Tyler Pattenden: Tyler is studying the dynamics of mobile genetic elements, particularly plasmid prophage and homing endonucleases.
• Amjad Khan: Amjad is studying the population genetics of prophage sequences in bacterial genomes.

• Josh LeClair: Josh has been building a simulation of honey bee dynamics and will be joining us as an MSc student in the fall term, 2016.