Pinar Ayata
Principal Investigator (2020 – present)
Pinar received her BSc in Biological and Biomedical Science from Sabanci University in Turkey, where she was born and raised. During her undergraduate studies, she did summer internships at the German Cancer Research Center and Harvard Medical School. She served both as a Teaching Assistant and a Research Assistant during the final years of her undergraduate studies before embarking on her PhD thesis research in the lab of Dr. Nathaniel Heintz at The Rockefeller University. Here, she focused on understanding the interaction of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine modification and MeCP2 protein, and the pathophysiology of Rett syndrome. Upon completion of her doctoral studies, the joined the lab of Dr. Anne Schaefer at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai for her post-doctoral work. There, her work led to the identification of cerebellar microglia as a subtype of microglia that functionally specialize in the phagocytic clearance of apoptotic neurons. Her work also highlighted the epigenetic mechanisms that maintain the specification of microglial subtypes and their importance in normal brain function. Pinar’s most recent unpublished results from her postdoc reveal subsets of microglia that play opposing roles in in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) progression. She also discovered that transcriptional regulation of the population dynamics of the AD-associated microglia. Pinar’s work has received several awards including the Women and Science Graduate Fellow Award, The Rockefeller University Graduate Fellowship, NARSAD Young Investigator Award, and Robin Chemers Neustein Postdoctoral Award.
Anna Flury
PhD student (2022 – present)
Provost’s Pre-Dissertation Science Research Fellowship
Doctoral Student Research Grant (DSRG)
ASRC Private Donor Student Conference Travel Award
Anna is a second-year PhD student in Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology Program. She received a BA in Molecular and Cellular Biology from UC Berkeley in 2019, where she worked in an evolutionary genetics lab with yeast. After that, she went on to work with C. elegans on another evolutionary genetics project as a Research Associate at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.
Leen Aljayousi
PhD student (2022 – present)
Provost’s Pre-Dissertation Science Research Fellowship
Leen is a second-year PhD student in Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology Program. Her research interest revolves around exploring the role of epigenetic changes on behavior and neurodegenerative disorders. She completed her undergraduate studies in Biology at Al-Quds Bard College in Palestine. There she joined the Palestinian Neuroscience Initiative (PNI) and conducted her undergraduate research on the effects of serotonin transporter haplotypes on rule generalization in healthy individuals. She then continued to work as a research associate in the behavioral neurogenetics unit at the PNI investigating the effects of Dopamine and serotonin SNPs on cognitive functions in humans.
Thi Ngo
Lab Manager / Research Assistant (2021 – present)
Jack Mechler
PhD student (2023 – present)
Jack is a third-year PhD student in the Biochemistry Program and he is co-mentored with Amedee des Georges at NYU. He did his undergraduate at Saint Lawrence University, where he worked in the Marano lab researching bacterial amyloid proteins. In his PhD studies, he has worked in the lab of his co-mentor Dr. Amedee des Georges, to uncover the structural stories of native membrane protein interaction, to this end, employing cutting-edge techniques in in situ cryo-electron microscopy. He is interested in leveraging these techniques to study the structural components of Alzheimer’s disease. Outside of research, Jack is an avid reader and writer.
Simíra Smith
Summer undergraduate student (Summer 2024)
Simíra is an undergraduate student majoring in Biology with a concentration in Biomedical sciences. She has been doing research for about three years in the Sauane Lab at Lehman College focusing on the molecular mechanisms of the cytokine Interleukin-24. She is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms of diseases and aspires to pursue an MD/PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology. Outside of research, Simíra writes and performs spoken word poetry.
Matthew Velez
Summer undergraduate student (Summer 2024)
Matthew Velez is a nursing student at New York City College of Technology. He has done clinical rotations in the medical-surgical unit of Bellevue Hospital and the Intensive Care Unit of Maimonides Medical Center. Matthew takes great interest in the nursing care and management of neurosurgical patients and patients with neurodegenerative diseases. Along with learning to practice the role of a registered nurse, he is also interested in participating in research that involves the nervous system, hoping to pursue an MD in the field. In his free time, Matthew likes to try a variety of foods at different restaurants in New York City.
Katie Park
High school student (2023-present)
Former Members & Alumni
Rotation Ph.D. Students
Undergraduate Students
Technicians
High school Students
Aleena Skylar (2022-2023)
Alexis Mai (2022-2023)
Violet Teodorescu (Summer 2023)
Zenel Agolli (Summer 2023)