2024: Tiffany Bastos, Amina Jumamyradova, Alexey Soshnev, Cameron M. Chapa, Dustin Fetch, Gauri Raje, Natalie Redding, and Ksenia Dydo
Tiffany received an undergrad degree at Rutgers University majoring in Biology. She is currently working towards a MS degree in Biotechnology at Johns Hopkins University. Somehow, she manages to work full-time in the lab as well, studying how chromatin is affected by changes in polyamine levels, and managing lab daily routines. After receiving her Masters, she plans on attending medical school for Trauma Surgery.
She loves to garden and bake macarons during her free time. She also loves to travel, and has visited 6 out of the 7 continents.
Noah is an undergraduate at the University of Texas at San Antonio with a major in neuroscience under the pre-medicine pathway. Having recently joined the lab, he is currently assisting with protocols across multiple projects. After graduation, Noah plans to attend medical school to specialize in neurology.
Outside of the lab, he loves to hike, spend time with his family, and cook new recipes
short bio pending
Ksenia is an undergraduate student at UTSA studying Microbiology and Immunology as well as Math. In the lab, she is working on the biochemistry of H1 proteins, and is our resident expert in recombinant protein expression and purification.
After graduating, Ksenia is planning on entering a masters program to ultimately pursue a PhD. In the future, she hopes to study molecular interactions and kinetics as a research scientist. In her free time she enjoys cooking, reading, and spending time with her four (sic!) cats
Dustin received his M.S. and B.S. in Biology from The University of Texas at San Antonio. He is interested in understanding how missense mutations in histones result in a loss of function phenotype that drive malignant transformation.
Outside of lab Dustin enjoys spending time with friends, family, and his three dogs. Fun fact, Dustin spent some time excavating dinosaurs in the Dakotas - the Black Hills Institute hoodie you see him wearing is not a random souvenir.
Ava is a second-year undergraduate studying Microbiology and Immunology (and some chemistry). She just joined the lab and has not committed to a specific project yet, but will be assisting Dustin with some gene editing experiments in the near future.
Ava plans to join a PhD program to pursue a career in research. In her free time, she like spending time outdoors, with friends and family, and reading.
Amina graduated from UTSA with a B.S. in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology in 2024. During her undergraduate she was a MARC-2 program scholar under the NIH Training and Workforce Development division. She joined Soshnev Lab during her junior year of undergraduate and decided to stay in the lab after graduation as a post-bacc research associate. In the lab Amina studies mechanistic effects of mutations in H1 histones in developmental disorders.
Amina wants to pursue a career as a medical doctor. Outside of the lab Amina enjoys photography, thrifting, graphic design, and spending time with friends and family.
Gauri is a first-year M.S student majoring in Biotechnology. She graduated from UTSA with a B.S. in Biology, and joined our group to figure out how polyamines affect chromatin structure.
Outside the lab, Gauri likes to read, sketch, paint and visit the library.
Natalie is a third-year undergraduate at UTSA, majoring in mathematics. In the lab, she is currently working on how histone modifications correlate with (and dictate) cell fate decisions, using taste bud cells as a model.
In the future, she plans to pursue a master's degree in genetic counseling. During her free time, she enjoys concerts, books, and coffee.
Alexey was born in Russia, where he attended Faculty of Medicine at St. Petersburg State University. During that time, he serendipitously completed a short exchange program with the University of Iowa and decided to pursue a career in research. He completed his PhD with Pam Geyer at Iowa followed by a postdoc with C. David Allis at The Rockefeller University in New York.
Alexey started his lab at UT San Antonio in the Fall of 2022. In his rare free time, he enjoys cooking for his family, stargazing, bugs, and classical music. Fun fact - he learned English in high school, but mostly got serious about it because of original Baldurs Gate game.
Brigid graduated from the University of Arizona with a double major in Molecular and Cellular Biology and Neuroscience and Cognitive Science in 2019. Since then, she has worked as a research assistant studying computational neuroscience, spinal cord injury, and in preclinical cancer research. In the lab she manages the mouse colony and aims to pursue a graduate degree in Neuroscience in the near future.
Outside of the lab, Brigid likes to paint, read and go to concerts.
Cameron received her B.S. in Biochemistry at The University of Texas at Austin and joined the Soshnev Lab in the Fall of 2022 (as the first lab employee!). She studied how changing H3 K27me3 levels impact pluripotency in mouse embryonic stem cells using wet lab and bioinformatic techniques.
Cameron is now Women & Science Fellow at The David Rockefeller Graduate Program in Bioscience at The Rockefeller University (New York)