Current Members
Jishnu Das | Biography
Principal Investigator, Assistant Professor
Jishnu completed an undergrad degree in Bioengineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur followed by graduate studies in Computational Biology at Cornell University. After a short postdoc at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT & Harvard/MIT, Jishnu started his Systems Immunology lab. His most important role is that of a “translator" of jargon across disciplines (comp bio, basic and translational clinical immunology); this helps bridge the interdisciplinary expertise in the lab. He is also a cheerleader for all projects in the lab.
Hanxi Xiao | Joined August 2020
PhD Student | CMU-Pitt Program in Computational Biology (CPCB)
Hanxi is currently a PhD student focusing on developing methods for sequencing data analyses. She is mainly interested in applied statistics and machine learning approaches. She has 2 cats who take up most of her free time and is trying to grow a patio garden!
Swapnil Keshari | Joined January 2022
PhD Student | CMU-Pitt Program in Computational Biology (CPCB)
Swapnil is a Computational biologist enthusiast with a keen interest in the field of genomics. Before joining the CPCB program, he completed his B.Tech. in chemical engineering from IIT Bombay, India. He likes to travel a lot and is always up for outdoor sports :). In addition to that, he loves to read crime fiction novels, paint and swim.
Prabal Chhibbar | Joined January 2022
PhD Student | Integrative Systems Biology (ISB)
Prabal completed his B.Tech in computer science and engineering from SRM Institute of Science and Technology in 2019. His interests are in Protein-Protein Interactions, Host-Viral interactions, complex networks, machine learning and deep learning. Prabal is always eager to discuss science and brainstorm ideas. Out of work, you can find him passionately discussing politics, hanging out with his friends or reading voraciously and consuming a whole lot of content.
Trirupa Chakraborty | Joined January 2022
PhD Student | Integrative Systems Biology (ISB)
Trirupa has done her BS-MS dual degree from IISER Mohali, India. Her research is primarily focused on understanding the network of non-coding DNA regions in the B cell and how they may affect B cell fate dynamics. When she is not squinting at large blocks of code, you'd find her exploring new places to eat, grooving to random Tamil songs and learning Indian classical dance or just chillin' with her friends B)
Priyamvada Guha Roy | Joined February 2022
PhD Student | Human Genetics
Priyamvada is a second year master's student in the Department of Human Genetics. She is interested in studying the genetic architecture underlying complex traits of public health importance. In her free time, she enjoys baking and petting dogs.
Marisa Abundis | Joined January 2023
PhD Student | CMU-Pitt Program in Computational Biology (CPCB)
Marisa Abundis is a first year PhD student in the Department of Computational & Systems Biology. She is interested in using computational methods to improve our understanding of human health and disease. In her free time she enjoys thrifting, finding new places to eat, and looking at cute animals.
Alisa Omelchenko | Joined January 2023
PhD Student | CMU-Pitt Program in Computational Biology (CPCB)
Alisa completed a B.S./M.S. in Biotechnology at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Her scientific goal is to bridge the gap between the computational and biology fields through designing easily adaptable computational methods. Outside of work, she is an avid baker and loves learning to cook new cuisines. She also enjoys dancing, hiking, and yoga.
Trang Dang | Joined March 2022
Masters Student | Human Genetics
Trang is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Genomic Bioinformatics in Human Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh of Public Health. She is interested in software development and algorithm implementation of statistical methods to analyze “omic” data for innovating genomic tools.
Akash Kishore | Joined January 2023
Masters Student | CMU
Akash is currently a masters student in Automated Science at CMU. He's interested in utilizing computational approaches for problems in biology no matter how big or small. Purveyor of random stories as a trivia buff, and always up for a game of tennis :)
Kiran Nazarali | Joined June 2020
Undergraduate Student | Computer Science
Kiran is an undergraduate student majoring in Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has been working as a student researcher in Dr Das's lab since 2020. Her research involves mining and analyzing data using machine learning algorithms and differential expression analysis. As a researcher in the field of data science, she utilizes programming languages including R, Python, and Java. Her goal is to use critical thinking skills to solve computing problems and acquire skills to conquer the problems of tomorrow.
Jacob Berkowitz | Joined May 2021
Undergraduate Student | Statistics
Jacob is a 4th year statistics major at the University of Pittsburgh also pursuing minors in mathematics and computer science. His research lies in the utilization of machine learning within high dimensional data. He is interested in the application of my research in the fields of medicine and sports, particularly baseball (go Dodgers!).
Jane Siwek | Joined June 2022
Undergraduate Student | TechBio REU Internship
Jane is a student researcher pursuing a degree in Computational & Applied Mathematics & Statistics, Mathematical Biology Track from William & Mary. She is interested in the intersection between data science and biology, specifically using machine and deep learning methods to explore biological problems such as protein-protein interactions. She is also interested in using deep learning and neural networks to explore global education data and satellite imagery.
Simar Yadav | Joined February 2022
Undergraduate Student | IIT Roorkee
Simar is an Undergraduate Student Researcher in Das Lab at the University of Pittsburgh and a Senior at IIT Roorkee in the department of Biosciences and Bioengineering. His hobbies are playing soccer and swimming and he is a huge Man United fan. His research interest lies in the field of Computational and Structural Biology and he loves to learn more about it.
Srishti Badaya | Joined January 2023
Undergraduate Student | IIT Bombay
Srishti is an Undergraduate Student Researcher in our lab, and a sophomore majoring in the Department of Chemical Engineering in IIT Bombay. She is pursuing a minors in Artificial Intelligence & Data Science and is fascinated by bioinformatics and graph theory in systems biology, especially seen in protein-protein interaction networks. She is aiming to implement ML and computational biology algorithms for decoding the non-coding regions of DNA to understand the impact of mutations on GRNs. You’ll likely spot her at the pool, dance studio, or tinkering in a lab!
Honorary Members
Isha Mehta | Joined January 2022
Research Scientist | Computational Immunology (CIG) Core
Passion to study the broader perspective to answer biological questions as opposed to the traditional reductionist approach is what brought Isha to Computational-Immunology Core. 'Wordle' and 'Quordle' are her daily dose of Dopamine.
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Ogechukwu Ezenwa | Joined October 2022
Core Data Analyst | Computational Immunology (CIG) Core
Oge received her BSc degree in Biochemistry from Purdue University. She started working as an undergraduate research assistant in a plant science lab where she performed wet lab experiments. Currently, she is working as a Junior Core Data Analyst to analyze genomics and transcriptomics datasets for different labs that utilize Computational Immunogenomic Core (CIG Core) services at Pitt/UPMC. She enjoys listening to Korean and Afro-pop and attending music concerts/festivals.
Alexis Brownell | Joined October 2022
Core Data Analyst | Computational Immunology (CIG) Core
Alexis comes to the CIG Core by a roundabout route, having majored in math and then worked as a data analyst in economics, including at CMU's Tepper School. In her free time, Alexis enjoys puzzles and trivia.
Past members
Lab Alumni
Syed A. Rahman, Post Doc (2021-22) - Now at GSK
Xin (Mike) Bing [Primary Mentors - Florentina Bunea & Marten Wegkamp @Cornell], Graduate Student (2020-21) - Now Asst. Prof. at University of Toronto
Previous Rotation Students
Akanksha Sachan, CPCB (2022)
Carlos Cosme Jr, MSTP (2022)
Mengying Hu, CPCB (2021)
Sonia Kruznelnecki, ISB (2021)
Roshni Bhatt, CPCB (2020)
Sophia Hu, CPCB (2020)
Previous Research Interns
Anna Rosengart, Undergraduate Student Researcher (2022)
Ansgar Devadhasan, Undergraduate Student Researcher (2022)
Iliyan Nazarali, Hillman Cancer Academy Program (2022)
Woo Yong Chang, Master's Student (2020-21)
Eunseo Sung, Undergraduate Student Researcher (2021-22)
Lian Morales, Undergraduate Student Researcher (2021-22)
Amna Irfan, TECBio@REU undergraduate (2020)