Lab Alumni

Updated June 24, 2022

VOSSHALL LAB ALUMNI

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS (n=19)

Richard Benton Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Richard was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab from 2003-2007. He received his PhD in Biology from the The Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Institute, Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, where he worked with Daniel St. Johnston on the role of the PAR genes in cell polarization. He is the recipient of an EMBO Long-Term Fellowship and a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. He moved to the Center for Integrative Genomics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland in 2007, where he set up his own independent laboratory, rising through the ranks to tenured professor. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2022.

Mike Crickmore Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Mike earned his PhD degree in 2007 from Columbia University, where he worked with Richard Mann on organ size regulation by hox genes. He is a 2007 Harald Weintraub Graduate Student Award Winner, 2008 Marco Stoffel Mind, Brain, and Behavior Postdoctoral Fellow Awardee, a 2009 Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow, and Grand Prize winner in the 2009 GE & Science Prize for Young Life Scientists. In the Vosshall Lab he worked on male sexual behavior. He moved on to Harvard University in 2013 and to an independent faculty position at Boston Children’s Hospital in 2014. (Photo: Allan Zepeda, 2008). The Crickmore Lab Web page at Boston Children’s Hospital can be reached at this link.

Matthew DeGennaro Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Associate

Matt earned a BA in the history and philosophy of science from Bard College and his PhD in developmental genetics from the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at New York University School of Medicine in 2008. His PhD thesis in the laboratory of Dr. Ruth Lehmann concerned germ cell migration and the discovery of redox signaling in this process. In the Vosshall Lab he worked on the genetics of skin odor perception in mosquitoes. He went on to a position at Florida International University in 2014 (Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011). The DeGennaro Lab Web page at Florida International University can be reached at this link.

Maria Elena (Ellen) De Obaldia Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Associate

Ellen earned an A.B. with high honors in Biology from Harvard College in 2008. As an undergraduate, she studied in vivo vasculogenesis from human cord-blood derived progenitor cells in Joyce Bischoff’s laboratory at Children’s Hospital Boston. She went on to complete PhD training in Immunology, mentored by Avinash Bhandoola at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, graduating in 2014. Ellen was awarded the Tom Kadesch Prize in Genetic Research and the Saul Winegrad, MD Outstanding Dissertation Award for her thesis work on mechanisms of T cell lineage commitment. Ellen joined the Vosshall Lab in 2014, with a broad interest in studying the interactions between anthropophilic disease vector mosquitoes and their mammalian hosts, from which they must obtain a blood meal to reproduce. Specifically, Ellen is investigating why Aedes aegypti mosquitoes prefer skin odor from some humans over that of others. Further, she wants to understand the mechanistic basis for the preference of Aedes aegypti for biting humans over other non-human mammals, using novel in vivo and ex vivo animal models. Ellen envisions that the answers to these fundamental questions will suggest novel ways to deter mosquito biting behavior and disease spread. Ellen is the recipient of a 2014 Harvey L. Karp Discovery Award, is a 2016 Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Fellow, and is a recipient of a 2017 pilot award from the Rockefeller University Center for Clinical and Translational Science (RUCCTS), supported by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NIH/NCATS). Ellen went on to a position at Kingdom Supercultures from 2021 to 2023. Photo: Trevor Sorrells.

Mathias Ditzen Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Mathias received his Diplom and PhD from the Free University in Berlin, where he worked with Drs. Randalf Menzel and Giovanni Galizia on the olfactory system of the honeybee. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for studies abroad at Tulane University during his undergraduate work. Mathias worked on the mechanism of action of insect repellents from 2005-2008. He was a 2006 recipient of the Henry and Marie Josee Kravis Postdoctoral Fellow Award. In March 2008, he returned to Berlin to accept a position in clinical studies administration.

Laura B. Duvall PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow

Laura earned a B.A. in Biochemistry and the Biological Basis of Behavior from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007. She went on to complete a PhD in Neuroscience mentored by Paul Taghert at Washington University in St. Louis, graduating in 2012. In the Vosshall Laboratory, Laura worked on the regulation of mosquito feeding behavior by neuropeptides and their receptors. Laura was a recipient of a 2013 Women & Science Postdoctoral Fellowship, was named the first and sole recipient of the Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biological Science from the American Philosophical Society in 2013, and was a 2016 recipient of the Polak Young Investigator Award from the Association for Chemoreception Sciences. She went on to a faculty position at Columbia University in 2019. Photo: Trevor Sorrells. The webpage of the Duvall Lab can be found here.

Gabriel Gasque Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Gabriel received his PhD in Biochemistry in 2005 from the Institute of Biotechnology, National University of Mexico (UNAM), working with Dr. Alberto Darszon. He trained as a postdoctoral fellow in Brian McCabe’s laboratory at Columbia University until joining our group in 2007. Gabriel is a recipient of a Latin American Scholar Award from the Pew Fellows Program in the Biomedical Sciences. In the Vosshall Lab, he studied chemical regulation of feeding behavior in Drosophila. In September 2013, he accepted an editor position at PLoS Biology. Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011

Andreas Keller Ph.D.
Research Associate

Andreas received his Diplom degree in Virology from the Friedrich-Alexander- University in Erlangen, Germany. He received his PhD degree in Genetics from the Julius-Maximilian-University in Wuerzburg, Germany, where he worked with Dr. Martin Heisenberg. Andreas is the 2003 recipient of the Marco S. Stoffel Postdoctoral Fellowship in Mind, Brain and Behavior. He was named postdoctoral finalist for a 2008 Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists from the New York Academy of Sciences. Andreas is the recipient of a 2008 Branco Weiss Science in Society Fellowship and a 2009 NARSAD Young investigator award. Andreas investigates the perceptual rules of smell in humans. (Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011)

Mattias Larsson Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Mattias earned his Ph.D. from Lund University in Sweden, working with Bill Hansson. He was a postdoc in the lab from 2003-2004 and went on to an Assistant Professor position at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Department of Crop Science, Division of Chemical Ecology Alnarp, Sweden.

Matthieu Louis Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Matthieu was a postdoc in the lab from 2003-2007 and went on to a junior group leader position at the CRG in Barcelona. Matthieu received his BA and MA degrees from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium in Theoretical Physics. He received his PhD degree in Bioinformatics from the Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK and was a fellow of the European Bioinformatics Institute, EMBL outstation located in the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Cambridge, UK. He worked in the laboratory of Dr. Liisa Holm on mathematical and computational modeling of gene regulatory networks. He was a 2004 recipient of a postdoctoral fellowship from the Belgian American Educational Foundation and a 2006 Recipient of a Revson Senior Fellowship in Biomedical Sciences. He went on to a group leader position at the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona and was recruited to the University of California, Santa Barbara where he is currently an assistant professor.

Ben Matthews PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow

Ben earned a BS in biology from the California Institute of Technology in 2004 and a PhD in Neurobiology and Behavior from Columbia University in 2010, where he worked in the laboratory of Wes Grueber on the mechanisms of dendrite self-avoidance mediated by the Dscam gene. He joined the Vosshall Lab in September 2010 and received a 2010 Henry and Marie Josee Kravis Postdoctoral fellowship and a 2011 Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral fellowship. Ben developed CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing in the mosquito and has produced comprehensive genomic and transcriptomic resources to better understand mosquito biology. In 2018 he spearheaded the resequencing, reassembly, and reannotation of the Aedes aegypti genome as the leader of the Aedes Genome Working Group. In the Vosshall Lab he is investigated the genes and neural circuits that control mosquito egg-laying in response to water quality cues. In 2019, Ben went on to a tenure-track position at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Photo: Trevor Sorrells. The Matthews Lab webpage can be found here.

Carolyn (Lindy) McBride Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Carolyn (Lindy) received her B.A. from Williams College in 1998 and her Ph.D. in Population Biology from the University of California at Davis in 2008. Her dissertation was conducted under the mentorship of Michael Turelli and Sergey Nuzhdin and addressed the evolutionary process and consequences of ecological adaptation in insects – focusing on the butterfly Euphydryas editha and the vinegar flies Drosophila sechellia and Drosophila erecta. In the Vosshall lab she studied the genetics of olfactory preference in the Yellow-Fever Mosquito, Aedes aegypti. She is a 2012 recipient of an NIH/NIDCD K99/R00 award and went on to a tenure-track position in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University in September 2014. (Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011). The McBride Lab Web page at Princeton University can be reached at this link.

Conor McMeniman Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Conor received his PhD from the University of Queensland, where he worked with Scott O’Neill to use Wolbachia to shorten the lifespan of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. In the Vosshall Lab from 2009-2015, Conor worked on genes and neural circuits controlling sensitivity to carbon dioxide in Aedes. He is a 2009 recipient of the Henry and Marie Josee Kravis Postdoctoral Fellow Award and a 2010 recipient of a Human Frontiers Science Program Long-Term Postdoctoral Fellowship. He studied carbon dioxide chemoreception in the mosquito. He went on to an assistant professor position at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute (Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011)

Jennifer Mehren Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Jennifer received her PhD from Brandeis University, Waltham MA. Jennifer is a Drosophila neurogeneticist who studied courtship behavior in Drosophila in the laboratory of Dr. Leslie Griffith at Brandeis. Jennifer was the 2005 recipient of the Marco Stoffel Fellowship in Mind, Brain and Behavior and was a postdoc in the lab from 2005-2007. She went on to a A.A.A.S fellowship at NIH-NINDS.

Takao Nakagawa Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Takao received his PhD from the University of Tokyo, where he worked with Kazushige Touhara on the functional characterization of insect pheromone receptors. He is a 2006 recipient of a postdoctoral fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Takao worked in the Vosshall lab on small molecule inhibitors of insect odorant receptors from 2005-2011 and moved on to a research scientist position at the KAO Corporation in Japan. (Photo: Allan Zepeda, 2008)

Eléonore Réal Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Eléonore received undergraduate training in chemical engineering at the École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris and a PhD in protein biochemistry from the Denis Diderot-Jussieu University, Paris, France working with Dr. Noël Tordo, Virology Department, Pasteur Institute, Paris. She carried out postdoctoral work with Dr. Antoine Triller at the École Normale Supérieure and with Dr. Roberto Malinow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. She is the recipient of a 2006 NARSAD Young Investigator Award and a 2008 Women & Science Postdoctoral Fellowship. She went on to a lecturer position at UNISTRA/University of Strasbourg in the Equipe Biophotonique des interactions moléculaires et cellulaires.(Photo by Allan Zepeda, 2008)

Silke Sachse Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Silke was a postdoc in the lab from 2002-2005, working on odor-evoked plasticity in the olfactory system. She was the recipient of a Rockefeller Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship and the 2003 Till Photonics Technology Award. She is currently a junior group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany.

Trevor Sorrells PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow

Trevor earned his BS in biology with research honors at Stanford University in 2009. As an undergraduate, he worked on the behavioral ecology of invasive and native ant species in the laboratory of Deborah Gordon, and ribosome-associated chaperones in the laboratory of Judith Frydman. He went on to obtain a PhD from UCSF in the Tetrad Graduate Program, working in the laboratory of Alexander D. “Sandy” Johnson in 2016. In the Johnson Lab, he studied the evolution of transcriptional networks. He was the recipient of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Kavli Neural Systems Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship. He joined the Vosshall Lab in February 2016, studying the genetic and neural basis of motivated behavior in the mosquito, and became an Assistant Professor at Yale University in 2022.

Nilay Yapici Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Nilay earned her BA in molecular biology and genetics from Bogazici University in Turkey and went on to earn a PhD in 2008 at Vienna University where she worked with Barry Dickson at the Institute of Molecular Pathology. In Barry’s lab she worked on the post-mating response of female flies and discovered the receptor for sex peptide. She is a 2009 recipient of a Human Frontier Science Program Postdoctoral Fellowship. In the Vosshall lab, she worked on feeding behavior in the fly, including the development of a new method to measure high resolution, real-time food intake in Drosophila. In September 2016, she became an Assistant Professor at Cornell University (Ithaca). (Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011)

Meg Younger PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow

Meg earned a BS in neural science with honors in 2004 from New York University. As an undergraduate, she worked with Justin Blau at NYU on circadian rhythms in Drosophila and with David Spray at Albert Einstein College of Medicine on mammalian gap junction channels. She went on to earn a PhD in neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco in 2013, working with Graeme Davis. Her graduate thesis concerned the role of ENaC sodium channels in synaptic homeostasis and plasticity in Drosophila. Meg earned a Genentech Fellowship in 2009 for her graduate work and was awarded the Sherrington, Charles Barbeiri, and Phi Beta Kappa Research prizes for her undergraduate research. She was a Grass Fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in summer 2014. After joining the Vosshall Lab, Meg earned a Leon Levy Neuroscience Fellowship in 2015 and a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2016. Meg is using neurophysiology and calcium imaging to study neural circuits in the mosquito brain. Meg also developed the mosquito brain atlas mosquitobrains.org, with the support of a Kavli Neural Systems Institute Pilot grant. She is a 2018 Kavli Neural Systems Institute postdoctoral fellow. Meg started her own laboratory at Boston University in January 2022. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

CLINICAL SCHOLAR (n=1)

Julien Hsieh, M.D.
Clinical Scholar

Julien received his M.D degree from the University Of Geneva in Switzerland where he worked on human olfaction following nasal surgery and the control of genome expression in yeast cells. He carried out an Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) residency at Luxembourg Hospital Center in Luxembourg. In 2014, he won the “Junior Scientific Excellence Prize” for the development of a Smell and Taste clinic in Luxembourg to treat chemosensory disorders and promote research in this field. He joined the Vosshall Lab in January 2014 as a Clinical Scholar. He worked with Andreas Keller in designing novel smell tests that will be useful to diagnose olfactory dysfunction in clinical settings around the world, and returned to a medical residency in Geneva in 2017.

GRADUATE STUDENTS (n=16)

Kenta Asahina
PhD Student

Kenta received his B.A. degree in Biology from the University of Tokyo and worked on larval coding in the lab from 2002-2008. He moved on to postdoctoral training at Caltech in David Anderson’s Lab and began an independent faculty position at the Salk Institute in 2014.
The Asahina Lab Web page at the Salk Institute can be reached at this link.

Nipun Basrur
PhD Student

Lindsay Bellani
PhD Student

Lindsay received her B.S. degree in biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2008. She worked in the lab in Spring 2010 as a rotation student working with Conor McMeniman on the molecular biology of host-seeking behavior in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, with a specific interest in heat sensation. She joined the lab in August 2010 after completing the MBL Neurobiology Summer Course and carried out human subjects research on the mechanisms that make some humans more attractive than others. She moved to a position as a data scientist with Dow Pioneer in September 2015 (Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011)

Jennifer Bussell
PhD Student

Jennifer earned her A.B. in biological sciences with honors and a specialization in cellular and molecular biology from the University of Chicago in 2004. As an undergraduate, she studied recombination within primate sex chromosomes in Bruce Lahn’s laboratory of human genetics. After working with Eléonore Réal on Drosophila pheromones during a rotation in the summer of 2008, she joined the lab in fall 2008 and is studied Drosophila female sexual behavior. She graduated in June 2014 and went on to postdoctoral training in Richard Axel’s laboratory at Columbia University. She was named a Simons Foundation Junior Fellow in 2015. (Photo: Allan Zepeda, 2008)

Roman Corfas
PhD Student

Roman earned his undergraduate degree from Oberlin College in 2008, where he majored in neuroscience. He rotated in the lab during Fall of 2009, working with Conor McMeniman on the molecular biology of host-seeking behavior in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, with a specific interest in carbon dioxide and heat sensation. He joined the lab in 2010 and studied the genetic basis of heat-seeking behavior in the mosquito, and obtained his PhD in 2016. He went on to postdoctoral training at Caltech with Michael Dickinson. (Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011)

Emily Dennis
PhD Student

Emily is a 2011 graduate of the University of Rochester. She received a combined BA/BS in Molecular Genetics and Studio Arts. While an undergraduate, she carried out research in the laboratories of Baek Kim and Jack Werren at the University of Rochester, Zhirong Bao’s laboratory at Sloan Kettering, and Maik Huttemann’s laboratory at Wayne State University. She rotated in the lab in Fall/Winter 2011-2012, working with Ben Matthews on oviposition behavior and participated in the MBL Neural Systems & Behavior course in the summer of 2012. She joined the lab in August 2012 to work on contact chemoreception and the mechanism of action of insect repellents. Emily is a 2014 recipient of an NIH/NIDCD F31 individual NRSA predoctoral fellowship. She graduated in June 2018, and went on to postdoctoral work with Carlos Brody at Princeton University. (Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011)

Ana Domingos
PhD Student

Ana received her undergraduate degree in Mathematics from the Faculdade de Ciencias da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal. She received her PhD student with a fellowship from the Gulbenkian PhD Programme in Biology and Medicine, Oeiras, Portugal in May 2005. She went on to a postdoc at The Rockefeller University with Dr. Jeff Friedman, and a faculty position at the Gulbenkian Institute. In 2018, she moved to University of Oxford in the UK.

Shelli Farhadian
PhD Student

Shelli earned a BS in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003, and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to India where she researched genetic risk factors for heart disease. She was awarded a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans in 2007 and an F30 predoctoral NRSA fellowship from NIH in 2008. In the Vosshall Lab she worked on the regulation of behavior by feeding state and returned to the MD-PhD program to complete her PhD in August 2010. She went on to residency training at Yale University School of Medicine in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, and is currently an assistant professor in Serena Spudich’s laboratory at Yale University. She is supported by a K23 award from the National Institutes of Mental Health, the American Federation for Aging Research, and the Patterson Trust.

Yelena Fishilevich
PhD Student

Yelena was the first Rockefeller PhD student to graduate from the Vosshall lab. She received her B.A. degree in Biochemistry from Vassar College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Yelena is a 2004 recipient of an NIH Ruth L. Kirchstein Predoctoral National Research Service Award. She is conducting postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Jonathan Minden at Carnegie Mellon University as a fellow of the American Cancer Society.

Margaret (Margo) Herre
PhD Student

Margo earned her BFA in Photography and Imaging with honors and a Minor in Chemistry from New York University in 2011. While still in college, she was a research technician at Eastern Virginia Medical School and at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Before entering the Tri-Institutional MD-PhD program in 2014, Margo was a veterinary assistant at the Tribeca Soho Animal Hospital and a health center intern at the Staten Island Zoo. She was a research assistant in Bob Darnell’s lab from 2011-2014, where we worked on the biochemistry of Fragile X Mental Retardation Syndrome. Margo joined the Vosshall Lab in 2016 after a short rotation with Ben Matthews. She is studying mechanisms by which female mosquito behavior is reversibly modulated by blood-feeding. She participated in the 2016 CSHL Advanced Sequencing Technologies and Applications Course, and is a 2016 recipient of a Quadrivium Award for Innovative Research in Epigenetics. Margo was named a Kavli Neural Systems Institute Graduate Fellow in 2019. She returned to Weill Cornell Medicine in August 2022 to complete her medical training. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Walt Jones
PhD Student

Walt received his BS in biology from Eastern Nazarene College and defended his Ph.D. on December 5, 2006 as part of the Tri-Institutional MD-PhD program. He is currently an assistant professor and director of the Lab for Behavioral Neurobiology at KAIST in Seoul, South Korea. The Jones Lab Web page at KAIST can be reached at this link.

Veronica Jove
PhD Student

Veronica received her B.A. degree from Columbia University in 2014 in Biological Science and Hispanic Studies. At Columbia, she was named an Amgen Scholar and worked in the laboratory of James Manley on MecP2 gene expression and splicing as affected by ALS mutations. She rotated in the Vosshall lab in the Winter-Spring of 2014, working with Ellen De Obaldia on devising behavioral assays that probe the effects of the microbiome on attraction of mosquitoes to hosts, and with Meg Younger on glutamate receptor expression in the mosquito brain. She joined the lab in September 2015 after participating in the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory Neurobiology Course. Her project uses behavior, genomics, and calcium imaging to map the circuitry that detects blood and initiates blood-feeding behavior. Veronica is a recipient of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and is a Gilliam Fellow of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She went on to carry out postdoctoral training at the Pfizer Center for Therapeutic Innovation. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Jeff Liesch
PhD Student

Jeff earned a BS in Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics from the University of Maryland at College Park in 2004. He joined the lab in 2008 and concentrated his Ph.D. work on the neuropeptide regulation of host-seeking behavior in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. He defended his PhD in 2013 and is currently the Associate Director for Life Sciences at Navigating Consulting, NY. (Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011)

Moli Liu
PhD Student

Moli earned their B.A. in Biological Sciences at the University of Chicago in 2013, where they worked with Chip Ferguson on Drosophila stem cell signalling. They have also conducted research in the laboratories of Yuh Nung Jan at the University of California – San Francisco, Shawn Xu at the University of Michigan, and Yi Rao at the National Institute of Biological Sciences in Beijing. They rotated in the Vosshall Lab in the fall of 2013, working with Laura Duvall on determinants of female mosquito host seeking suppression after a blood meal and with Ben Matthews on mosquito gene-editing using the CRISPR-Cas9 system. They joined the lab in September 2014. Moli studied visual contributions to female mosquito host-seeking, with an emphasis on dissecting mosquito responses to sensory cues through fine spatiotemporal analysis of behavior. They have established and extended several paradigms for studying individual mosquito behavior, including magnetically tethering mosquitoes within a virtual reality visual arena and 3D tracking of mosquitoes responding to host cues in free flight. In 2019, Moli went on to postdoctoral training with Paloma Gonzalez-Bellido at the University of Minnesota. Photo: Leslie Vosshall

Maurizio Pellegrino
PhD Student

Maurizio received his Laura degree (B.S./M.S.) from Torino University in Italy in 2004. He earned a joint PhD in the Vosshall and Magnasco Laboratories, defending his thesis on July 22, 1010. In 2007, Maurizio was named the David Rockefeller Graduate Fellow for scientific excellence and distinguished service to the University. He is pursuing postdoctoral training with Diana Bautista at the University of California, Berkeley.
(Photo: Allan Zepeda, 2008)

Krithika Venkataraman
PhD Student

Krithika Venkataraman earned a B.A. magna cum laude from Smith College in 2015, with highest honors in biochemistry and a minor in neuroscience. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi. At Smith College, Krithika studied gene regulation in filarial parasites in the laboratory of Steven A. Williams. For this work, she was awarded the 2014-2015 McKinley Honors Fellowship and the 2015 Margaret Wemple Brigham Prize from Smith College. Krithika was a summer intern in the laboratory of Dr. Utpal Tatu at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, where she worked on methods to control infections caused by protozoan parasites. She was also a visiting summer student in the laboratory of Kevin C. O’Connor at the Yale School of Medicine, where she investigated the role of muscle-specific tyrosine kinase (MuSK) autoantibodies in myasthenia gravis pathology. Krithika entered the PhD program at The Rockefeller University in 2015, and joined the laboratory of Leslie B. Vosshall. Currently, as a PhD candidate, Krithika studies how female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes regulate their attraction to humans depending on their reproductive physiology. Specifically, she was interested in how mosquito-specific genes and endocrine signaling modulate mosquito attraction. The broader goal of her work was to elucidate novel points of intervention to break the deadly biting cycles of disease vector mosquitoes. She was a recipient of the 2015-2016 Women & Science Fellowship and the 2018-2019 David Rockefeller PhD Fellowship from The Rockefeller University. She was also awarded the 2018 Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds PhD Fellowship. She graduated in June 2022 and is pursuing opportunities in science policy, outreach, and communications. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

ROTATION GRADUATE STUDENTS and MASTERS STUDENTS (n=26)

Ariadna Amador
PhD Rotation Student

Ariadna earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Miami. She rotated in the lab as a first year PhD student in the summer of 2007, working with Gabriel Gasque on the genetics of the Drosophila Ih ion channel. Ariadna worked in the lab from 2008-2010, earning a Master’s Degree. She went on to the PhD program at Scripps-Florida.

Vikram Chandra
PhD Rotation Student

Vikram is a 2014 graduate of Balliol College, University of Oxford, where he majored in biological sciences. At Oxford he studied motivational behaviors of thirst and hunger in the fly with Scott Waddell. He rotated in the lab in the Fall of 2014, and studied the evolution of DEET repellency with Emily Dennis.

Chiung-Ying Chang
PhD Rotation Student

Chiung-Ying earned B.S. and M.S. degrees from the National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan. She ranked first in her class for both degrees and is a five-time winner of the Presidential Award. Prior to joining the graduate program in 2008, Chiung-Ying worked on the cell biology of cargo sorting and autophagy with Dr. Wei-Pang Huang. She rotated in the Vosshall Lab in the Fall of 2008 and worked with Mike Crickmore on the regulation of male sexual behavior. She went on to do her PhD in the laboratory of Elaine Fuchs, and postdoctoral training with Gerry Crabtree at Stanford.

Eugenia Chiappe
PhD Rotation Student

Eugenia was a graduate student in the lab from 2000-2002, went on to do a PhD with A.J. Hudspeth at Rockefeller, a postdoc at HHMI-Janelia Farm, and is now on the faculty of the Champalimaud Institute.

Christine Cho
PhD Rotation Student

Christine graduated from Brown University in 2008 and rotated as a first year PhD student in our laboratory in the summer of 2009. She worked with Shelli Farhadian on the regulation of adult feeding behavior in Drosophila. She went on to join Cori Bargmann’s laboratory for her thesis work.

Alexandra Deaconescu
PhD Rotation Student

Alexandra rotated in the lab in 2002 and went on to do a PhD with Seth Darst at Rockefeller.

Julia Deere
PhD Rotation Student

Julie earned her undergraduate degree at Wellesley College and worked in Richard Axel’s laboratory at Columbia University as a research assistant before graduate school. She rotated in the Vosshall Lab in Spring 2021, working with Olivia Goldman on developing a single cell/nucleus RNA-seq protocol for mosquito sensory tissues. Julia went on to do her PhD work in Daniel Mucida’s laboratory at Rockefeller.

Eric Fritz
PhD Rotation Student

Eric received an A.B. Summa Cum Laude in June 2008 from Harvard University in Chemistry with Secondary Field in Mind, Brain, and Behavior before joining the Rockefeller graduate program in 2008. His previous research at Harvard and in Freiburg Germany was in synthetic organic chemistry. In the Vosshall lab, he rotated with Gabriel Gasque on the regulation of feeding behavior in Fall 2008. He went on to do his PhD in the laboratory of Nina Papavasiliou.

Lauren Giarratani
Graduate Fellow, Masters Degree

Laurie was a graduate student in the lab from 2002-2004 and graduated with a Master’s Degree. She is currently a Research Specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out of School Environments.

Caitlin Gilbert
PhD Rotation Student

Caitlin earned a B.S. cum laude in neurobiology, linguistics minor from Georgetown University in 2013. From 2013-2015, Caitlin was a research assistant in the laboratory of Michael Greenberg at Harvard Medical School, studying genetics of MeCP2 in Rett Syndrome across several mouse models. She entered the Rockefeller PhD program in 2015, and rotated in the Tessier-Lavigne lab before rotating in the Vosshall Lab in 2016, where she worked with Andreas Keller to test the ability of human volunteers to discriminate mixtures of olfactory stimuli. She went on to do her PhD in the laboratory of Erich Jarvis.

Anoj Ilanges
PhD Rotation Student

Anoj received his undergraduate degree from Yale and rotated in the Vosshall Lab in Winter 2016/2017. He studied the role of dopamine signaling in mosquitoes, mentored by Trevor Sorrells. Anoj went on to do his PhD in the laboratory of Jeff Friedman. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Cong Liu
PhD Rotation Student

Cong did a virtual rotation with Trevor Sorrells in the Fall of 2020 using machine learning to analyze mosquito behavior.

Lindsey Lopes
PhD Rotation Student

Lindsey received her undergraduate degree from Haverford College and carried out post-graduate research in the lab of David Raizen at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied sleep in C. elegans. She rotated in the Vosshall Lab in the fall of 2018 and studied DEET resistance in nematodes. She went on to carry out thesis work in the laboratory of Daniel Kronauer. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Stephanie Marcus
PhD Rotation Student

Stephanie completed her bachelor’s degree at Rutgers University in 2015 before moving to Germany to study axolotl salamanders on a DAAD fellowship. In 2016, she began her graduate work rotating in the Vosshall lab, where she worked with Ben Matthews to characterize egg laying preferences of wild type and mutant Aedes aegypti mosquitos. She went on to study circuits for vocal learning in the laboratory of Erich Jarvis. Photo: Margaret Fabiszak

Tina Marney
PhD Rotation Student

Tina worked as a rotation student with Matthieu Louis in 2006-2007 and went on to do her PhD in the laboratory of Robert Darnell.

Javier Marquina-Solis
PhD Rotation Student

Javier received his B.Sc. degree in biological sciences from Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in 2013. From 2013-2015, he was a postgraduate research associate in the laboratory of Daniel Colon-Ramos at Yale University. At Yale, he led a project to generate a complete atlas of neural development in the nematode C. elegans. He rotated in the lab in Fall 2015, working with Meg Younger to define Aedes aegypti mosquitoe brain neurochemistry.

Sean McKenzie
PhD Rotation Student

Sean is a 2011 graduate of the University of the South, where he received a B.S. in Ecology and Biodiversity. He has extensive experience as a field biologist studying ants and termites and also worked on the Sewanee Forest History Project in Tennessee. He rotated in the Vosshall lab in the Fall of 2011 to learn molecular biology and genetics with Ben Matthews and Nilay Yapici. He went on to do his PhD in the laboratory of Daniel Kronauer. Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011

Miho Nakajima
PhD Rotation Student

Miho received her B.A. and M.A. degree in Biochemistry and Biophysics from the University of Tokyo. She rotated in the lab in 2005 and went on to pursue a PhD in the laboratory of Nat Heintz.

Jason Pinger
PhD Rotation Student

Jason earned a biochemistry degree from the University of Wisconsin. He entered the Rockefeller PhD program in 2011 and rotated with Lindsay Bellani in the Spring of 2012, during which time he worked on the problem of mosquito attraction to different human subjects. He went on to join the Papavasiliou laboratory for his PhD work.

Jason Pitts
Rotation PhD Student

Jason is a 2008 graduate of Cornell University who rotated in the Vosshall Lab in the Spring of 2011. He worked with Conor McMeniman on mosquito genetics.

Chanlek Tan
PhD Rotation Student

Chan received his undergraduate degree from Cambridge University and worked as a rotation student with Jenny Mehren in late 2006-early 2007. He went on to do a PhD in the laboratory of Paul Greengard.

Elizabeth (Ellie) Thompson
PhD Rotation Student

Ellie obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin. She rotated in the Vosshall Lab working with Nadav Shai on mosquito ingestive behavior in the fall of 2020. She went on to join Elaine Fuchs’s lab for her PhD training.

Joshua Zeng
Graduate Fellow, Masters Degree

Josh earned his B.A. in Biological Sciences at Cornell University in 2013, where he worked on contextual memory processing with Professor David Smith and acetylcholine signaling in a mouse model of Down Syndrome in mice with Dr. Barbara Strupp. He was a SURF in Gaby Maimon’s lab at Rockefeller in 2012, and rotated in the Vosshall Lab in the fall of 2014, working with Ben Matthews to develop novel instrumentation to score mosquito egg-laying behavior. He joined the lab in November 2014, and studied hygrosensation in Aedes mosquitoes. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

ROTATION MD-PHD AND MEDICAL STUDENTS (n=5)

Sha-har Admoni
HHMI Medical Research Fellow

Sha-har is a 2009 graduate of MIT, where she majored in Brain and Cognitive Sciences with a minor in Economics. She is a member of the Weill Cornell Medical College Class of 2013 and took a one year leave of absence from medical school to carry out bench biomedical research as part of the HHMI Medical Research Fellows Program. Sha-har worked on Drosophila feeding behavior with Nilay Yapici in 2012-2013 and returned to finish medical school in the summer of 2013.

Jonathan Chen
Rotation MD-PhD Student

Jonathan received his undergraduate degree at Stanford University. He worked as a rotation student with Matthieu Louis in the summer of 2006

Natasha Novikov
Rotation MD-PhD Student

Natasha graduated from Harvard in 2007 with a degree in Biochemistry, where she received a Flora M. Burt Fellowship and a Herchel Smith Harvard Undergraduate Research Fellowship. She rotated in the lab as a 1st year MD-PhD student working with Maurizio Pellegrino on structure-function analysis of Orco in the Summer of 2007.

Ifije Ohiorhenuan
Rotation MD-PhD Student

Ifije rotated in the lab in 2004 while a student in the Tri-Institutional M.D.-Ph.D. program.

Nicole Ramsey
Rotation MD-PhD Student

Nicole is a graduate of Howard University and entered the Tri-Institutional MD-PhD program in 2007. She did a summer rotation with Shelli Farhadian on mosquito gene expression.

VISITING MASTERS AND PHD STUDENTS (n=7)

Caroline Bushdid
Visiting Masters Student

Caroline earned her Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences with a specialization in Chemistry from the Université Paris V-­Descartes in Paris, France in June 2012. From July-December 2012, she worked as a development intern at Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle in Paris, France. In the Vosshall Laboratory, Caroline worked with Andreas Keller and Peggy Hempstead on human olfactory psychophysics from January-April 2013. She returned to the lab in the summer of 2013 to continue her work on the human sense of smell and moved on to a masters program at Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.

Carolina Gomez-Diaz
Visiting PhD Student

Carol was a visiting graduate student in our lab from May-August 2006 while conducting PhD research in the laboratory of Dr. Esther Alcorta at Universidad de Oviedo in Spain.

Sergio Juarez-Carreño
Visiting PhD Student

Sergio was a PhD student with Maria Dominguez at Instituto de Neurociencias, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientifícas and Universidad Miguel Hernández in Alicante, Spain. He worked with Nilay Yapici on Drosophila courtship behavior as a visiting student in spring/summer 2016. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Shrutika Lokapure
Visiting Master Student

Shrutika was a BS-MS dual degree student from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, India. She visited the Vosshall Lab in the Summer of 2022 as a Foreign Research Intern mentored by Adriana Rosas, working on the Neuronal Activation in the Aedes aegypti stylet. Photo: Umberto Palatini

Johannes Larsch
Foreign Research Intern

Johannes carried out his Diplom work in the Vosshall Lab from 2007-2008. His home institution is the University of Konstanz in Germany, where he worked with Giovanni Galizia. He returned to Rockefeller as a PhD student in the Fall of 2008 and carried out this thesis work in the laboratory of Cori Bargmann.

Kacy Redd
Visiting Graduate Student

Kacy worked in the Vosshall Lab as a visiting Ph.D. student from 2003-2006. She received her B.S. in Biology and Psychology in the Honors College of The University of Southern Mississippi. She is the recipient of a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellowship in Biological Sciences, and is currently a Ph.D. student in the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University with Dr. Gareth Tibbs.

Nicole Steinbach
Foreign Research Intern

Nicole earned her Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry/Chemistry (combined) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat, Munich (Bavaria), Germany in 2008 and completed work toward a Master of Science Degree in Biochemistry at the same institution in 2009-2010. Her past research interests included structural biology and biochemistry. She carried out Diploma work in our laboratory in 2009, working with Maurizio Pellegrino on the structure-function analysis of Orco.

Erika Von Heijne
Visiting Masters Student

Erika was an engineering Master’s student from Stockholm who worked on larval odor coding with Matthieu Louis in the summer of 2007.

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS (n=34)

Matthew Boisvert
BRSS Student

Matthew was a Bard College student who participated in the Bard Rockefeller Semester in Science in Spring 2011. He worked on male fly courtship behavior under the mentorship of Mike Crickmore.

Veronica Burnham
SURF Student

Veronica was an Oberlin College student, who worked with Mike Crickmore on male Drosophila courtship behavior during her January 2012 winter term break of her sophomore year and returned as a SURF student in the summer of 2012. She is majoring in neuroscience and cinema science.

Julia Canick
Undergraduate Volunteer

Julia was a Harvard College student who volunteered in the Vosshall lab in 2017, working with Ben Matthews on the genetics of oviposition. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Robbie Fenster
SURF (2001) and Summer Research Technician (2004)

Robbie received his A.B. in Biochemical Sciences, summa cum laude from Harvard University and a B.A. in English Literature from Cambridge University. He went on to the MD-PhD program at Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

Sarah Eskreis-Winkler
SURF Student

Sarah was a SURF in the summer of 2004, working with Yelena Fishilevich, while an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania. She went on to medical school at Weill Cornell Medical College, graduating in 2011 and is a Radiology resident at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Alina Genis
SURF Student

Alina worked in the lab in the Summer of 2008. She is a Cornell University undergraduate who started her senior year in the Fall of 2008. At Cornell she worked with Dr. David Deitcher on a genetic screen for epileptic Drosophila mutants. In our lab she worked with Gabriel Gasque on feeding behavior.
(Photo: Allan Zepeda, 2008)

David Gorestki
SURF Student

David is an undergraduate at Williams College. He was a SURF in the lab in the summer of 2019, working with Nipun Basrur on determining the subcellular localization of a mosquito-specific protein. Photo: Trevor Sorrells.

Ella Jacobs
Undergraduate Volunteer

Ella is a Cornell University student majoring in entomology with a minor in global health and infectious disease biology. Prior to joining the Vosshall Lab, Ella was an intern at The Field Museum of Natural History in 2014. In 2016, she was the recipient of a Women In Science Internship at The Field Museum of Natural History. At Cornell, she was a research assistant in the Cornell Insect Collection and in the Harrington Lab, where she studied the genetics of the mosquito post mating response. At Rockefeller, she worked with Trevor Sorrells on the role of dopamine signaling in motivated behavior in the mosquito in spring 2018. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Remzi Karayol
SURF Student

Remzi is an undergraduate at Bogazici University in Istanbul Turkey. He has previously worked in the laboratories of Dr. Thomas Schwarz and Dr. Judth Steen at Harvard Medical School and Dr. Arzu Celik’s laboratory at his home university. In the summer of 2011, Remzi worked with Nilay Yapici on Drosophila feeding behavior. He joined the Rockefeller University PhD program in 2012.

Shauna Katz
Undergraduate Researcher

Shauna worked with Richard Benton in the Winter of 2006, while a senior at Oberlin College.

Kenneth Kay
SURF Student

Kenny worked with Walt Jones and Andreas Keller in the summer of 2005. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University and went on to be a research assistant with Karl Deisseroth at Stanford University.

Kristina Lo
Summer Undergraduate Volunteer

Kristina is pursuing her Bachelor’s degree at Soochow University in South Korea and volunteered in the lab in the Summer of 2009. She worked with Jenny Hsieh and Gabriel Gasque on larval feeding behavior.

Annie Rose London
SURF Student

Annie Rose went on to pursue a Bachelor’s degree at Brown University and worked with Mike Crickmore on fly sexual behavior in Summer 2009.

Nareh Marukian
SURF Student

Nareh is pursued her Bachelor’s degree at Cornell University and worked with Matt DeGennaro and Lindy McBride on the genetic basis of host preference in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Summer 2009.

Natasha Meyer
SURF Student

Natasha worked with Gabriel Gasque on larval feeding behavior in Summer 2009 while pursuing her Bachelor’s degree at Davidson College. She went on to the Stanford University PhD program where she worked with David Kingsley, and a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University.

Viktoryia Pavlenkovich
BRSS Student

Viktoryia was a Bard College student who participated in the Bard-Rockefeller Semester in Science Program in Spring 2007. She worked on the ethology of larval olfactory behavior with Kenta Asahina and moved on to the PhD program at the FMI in Basel, Switzerland in 2008.

Saher Rahiel
Undergraduate volunteer

Saher was a Hunter College student who worked with Margo Herre as a Yalow Scholar in the 2019-2020 academic year. She studied chemosensory gene expression in the mosquito. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Emilie Russler
SURF Student

Mimi finished her freshman year at Stanford and worked with Kenta Asahina in the lab on larval food competition as a SURF in the summer of 2007.

Emma Schatoff
SURF Student

Emma Schatoff is a 2009 graduate of Marymount School and did a Senior Internship with Matt DeGennaro in May 2009 making DNA constructs for transgenic Aedes aegypti. She returned to the lab in Summer 2009 to continue her work as an Outreach Student and went on to enroll in the honor’s college at CCNY in Fall 2009. In the summer of 2010, Emma returned to continue working with Matt DeGennaro on mosquito genetics and behavior. She went on training in the Tri-Institutional MD-PhD program in New York City.

Heather Schneider
SURF Student

Heather Schneider is a 2013 graduate of the University of Washington, where she majored in Biology and Psychology. She worked with Matt DeGennaro on mechanisms of DEET repellency in the summer of 2013.

Nicholas Urban Schwartz
SURF Student

Nicholas is an undergraduate at Duke University majoring in Neuroscience & Philosophy with a minor in Biology. He previously worked in Dan Tracey’s laboratory at Duke on the problem of egg-laying behavior in Drosophila. In the summer of 2011, he worked with Ben Matthews on oviposition behavior in the mosquito. He went on to the MD-PhD program at Stonybrook University

Pawat Seritrakul
SURF Student

Pawat (“Champ”) Seritrakul is an undergraduate at Bowdoin College and worked with Gabriel Gasque on feeding behavior during the summer of 2010. He went on to PhD training at the University of Texas.

Eva Shrestha
BRSS Student

Eva was a junior at Bard College while working in the Vosshall Lab in the spring semester of 2013. She studied the sensory parameters driving mosquito oviposition behavior, mentored by Ben Matthews.

Ana Florencia Silbering
SURF Student

Ana Florencia worked as a SURF in the lab in the summer of 2002. She went on to do her Ph.D. with Giovanni Galizia at the Free University of Berlin, Germany

Ricarda von Heynitz
SURF Student

Ricarda is a medical student at the Technische Universität Munich, Germany. She transferred from the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität Munich in 2017, where she spent the first 2 years of her medical studies. Ricarda volunteered in the lab in Fall 2018, working with Nipun Basrur on the genetic basis of sexual dimorphism in Aedes aegypti host-seeking behavior. She returned to the lab as a SURF student in 2019 and worked with Olivia Goldman on contact chemoreception in adult mosquitoes. Photo: Trevor Sorrells.

Zhirong Wang
SURF student

Zhirong, an undergraduate at the University of Utah, worked in the lab for the summer of 2014. He worked with Emily Dennis to study orco-independent contact DEET repellency.

Zhaoying Xu
SURF Student

Zhaoying was an undergraduate at Grinnell College and worked with Nilay Yapici on fly feeding behavior in the summer of 2010.

Jin Hee Yoo
Undergraduate volunteer
Jin Hee was a Hunter College undergraduate working with Olivia Goldman in the 2019-2020 academic year. She studied contact chemoreception in adult mosquitoes. She went on to a research assistant position in Heran Darwin’s laboratory at NYU Langone Medical Center. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Stephen Zhang
SURF Student

Stephen was a student at Grinnell College majoring in Biological Chemistry who worked with Jennifer Bussell in the summer of 2012 on the neurons regulating female receptivity in the fly Drosophila melanogaster. He went on to a PhD program at Harvard University and is carrying out his thesis work in the laboratories of Dragana Rogulja and Mike Crickmore. He went on to postdoctoral training with David Ginty at Harvard.

Wancong Zhang
BRSS Student

Wan was an undergraduate student at Bard College who spent the Spring 2012 semester working in the Vosshall Lab under the auspices of the Bard-Rockefeller Semester in Science program. He worked on the post-fasting feeding response in Drosophila with Nilay Yapici, a project he continued as a SURF for the summer of 2012.

Jieqing Zhao
Visiting Undergraduate Student

While an undergraduate at Tsinghua University in China (Class of 2020), Jieqing worked with Krithika Venkataraman in the Spring-Fall 2019 to optimize protocols and generate proteomes of mosquito ovaries during different stages of reproduction. She also helped to generate knockouts for candidate regulators of host-seeking, and improve the efficiency of high-throughput assays for characterizing mosquito behavior.

Viktoriya Zhuravleva
SURF student

Viktoriya was an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina. She worked with Ellen De Obaldia in the summer of 2015 to optimize a behavioral assay to measure the influence of the microbiome onAedes aegypti host-seeking behavior.

Rachel Zipursky
SURF Student

Rachel was an undergraduate at Williams College. Previously she worked with Kelsey Martin at UCLA and worked with Mike Crickmore on male fly sexual behavior in the summer of 2010. She went on to medical school at UCLA and a residency at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).

Sarah Zylka
BRSS Student
Sarah attended Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson campus and obtained a BA in Biology in 2020. She worked in the lab as a Bard-Rockefeller Semester in Science student in the spring semester of 2020 mentored by Krithika Venkataraman to study the regulation of host-seeking behavior in female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Sarah focused on identifying the cell expression of two novel genes within the Aedes aegypti ovary using RNA in situ hybridization. Sarah went on to work as a research assistant in the laboratory of Vanessa Ruta. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS (n=55)

Charlotte Albunio
High School Intern

Charlotte Albunio volunteered in the lab in the summer of 2016 as part of the Marymount School intern program.

Ethan Ambrose
SSRP Outreach Student

Ethan was a high school student at Medgar Evers College Preparatory School. He worked in the Vosshall Lab as part of the SSRP in the summer of 2016 with Josh Zeng on the genetics of hygrotaxis in the mosquito. He enrolled in Harvard College in September 2016.

Daniel Baez
SSRP Outreach Student

Daniel worked in the Vosshall Lab as a high school student in 2002-2003 and went on to college at SUNY-Stony Brook.

Catherine Belfi
SSRP Outreach Student

Katie worked in the Vosshall Lab while in high school at Bronx Science in 2001-2002. She went on to college at Columbia University in New York.

Rashaun Bennett

High School Summer Intern

In the summer of 2021, Rashaun was a high school student at Trevor Day School in New York City and was a participant in the highly selective Prep for Prep leadership development program. Rashaun worked with Olivia Goldman in the summer of 2021. He also supported general lab operations mentored by Libby Mejia.

Celine Bien-Aime
High School Intern

Celine was a senior at Marymount School when she completed her senior internship in the Vosshall Laboratory in May 2013. Celine went on to college at Mount Holyoke.

Jake Brawer
SSRP Outreach Student

Jake was a student at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in New York City and worked with Gabriel Gasque on Drosophila feeding behavior in the summer of 2011.

Emma Broches
SSRP Outreach Student

Emma worked on feeding behavior with Gabriel Gasque in the summer of 2008 while a high school student at the Dalton School in New York.

Rachel Cardero
SSRP Outreach Student

Rachel worked in the lab as a high school student in the summer of 2004, while she was a student at Notre Dame High School in New York City. She went on to Columbia University where she majored in Neuroscience and Behavior.

Emily Cross
SSRP Outreach Student

Emily worked in the lab in the summer of 2004 while a high school student at the Brearley School. She went on to college at Harvard University.

Maya Davidov
SSRP Outreach Student

Maya participated in the SSRP program in the summer of 2017, working with Ellen De Obaldia to identify human subjects with differential attractiveness to mosquitoes.

Orion Despo
SSRP Outreach Student

Orion was a high school student from North Carolina who worked with Ben Matthews in summer 2012 on a de novo annotation of the Aedes aegypti neurotranscriptome. He previously worked in the laboratory of Dr. Fred Alt at Harvard University and moved on to Stanford University in 2013 for his undergraduate education.

Rose Di Pietro
High School Intern

Rose worked in the Vosshall Lab as a high school volunteer in the summer of 2019 as part of the Marymount School intern program.

Marianne Dorado
SSRP Outreach Student

A 2010 Marymount School graduate, Marianne returned to the lab in the summer of 2010 and worked with Jen Bussell to examine female courtship behavior in Drosophila.
Marianne volunteered in the lab in the Summer 2009 Outreach Program while a high school student at the Marymount School of New York. In previous summers, she participated in the Outreach Program at the American Museum of Natural History, working with Dr. David Kizirian in the Department of Herpetology. She entered Cornell University in the Fall of 2010.

Solomon Dworkin
High School Intern

Solomon was a student at Bard High School Early College in Manhattan. He studied the rules of Aedes aegypti oviposition with Ben Matthews during the summer of 2015. Solomon went on to college at the University of Chicago in the Fall of 2016

Konstantin Fishilevich
High School Intern

Konstantin worked in the lab in the summers of 2005 and 2006. He graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School and was working toward his B.S. in chemistry at the University at Buffalo.

Isabelle Fitzgerald
High School Intern

Isabelle was a high school student at the Marymount School of New York, and volunteered as an intern in the summer of 2015. She assisted with general lab operations, and went on to undergraduate study at the University of Virginia where she was named a Jefferson Scholar.

Adrian Franzoi
High School Intern

Adrian worked in the Vosshall Lab as a high school volunteer in the summer of 2019 as part of the Marymount School intern program.

Ana Greenberg
SSRP Outreach Student

Ana was high school student at The Chapin School and worked in the Vosshall Lab in the Summer of 2016 as part of the SSRP. She worked on mosquito host attraction to human skin bacteria with Ellen De Obaldia.

Anne Greer
SSRP Outreach Student

Ana was high school student at New Canaan High School and worked in the Vosshall Lab in the Summer of 2016 as part of the SSRP. She worked on mosquito host attraction to human skin bacteria with Ellen De Obaldia.

Sarah Hilado
High School Intern

Sarah volunteered in the lab in the summer of 2018 as part of the Marymount School intern program.

Victoria Hsia
SSRP Outreach Student

Vicky worked in the lab in the summer of 2005 while a high school student at East Brunswick High School in New Jersey and is interested in a career in medicine. She went on to college at Emory University.

Audrey Hooper
High School Intern

Audrey worked in the Vosshall Lab as a high school volunteer in the summer of 2022 as part of the Marymount School intern program.

Stephanie Huang
SSRP Outreach Student

Stephanie was a high school student from New Jersey who worked with Nilay Yapici on fly feeding behavior in the summer of 2012. She went on to undergraduate education at Columbia University.

Osasere Imade
SSRP Outreach Student

While a high school student at Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics (Class of 2020), Osasere worked with Krithika Venkataraman on developing mating and egg-laying assays to study mosquito behavior in summer 2019. She was a participant in the LAB Jumpstart and SSRP programs at RU.

Avril Johnnidis
SSRP Outreach Student

Avril worked in the lab for three summers (2003-2005) while she was a high school student at the Trinity School, first with Mattias Larsson and then independently under the guidance of Laurie Giarratani and Andreas Keller. She was a semi-finalist in the 2005 Intel Science Talent Search, which recognizes outstanding science projects contributed by high school seniors. Avril went on to college at Harvard University.

Nicole Konforti
SSRP Outreach Student

Niki was a student at the High School for Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at the City College of New York. She worked on Aedes aegypti contact chemorepellency with Emily Dennis in the summer of 2015. She matriculated at Columbia College in the City of New York in 2016.

Jelena Kostic
SSRP Outreach Student

Jelena was a high school student at Holmdel High School and worked with Mike Crickmore on the regulation of male fly copulation behavior in the summer of 2010.

Helen Köster
Visiting High School Student

Helen was a high school student from Germany who worked in the Vosshall Lab in the Fall of 2018.

Max Ladow
SSRP Outreach Student

Max was a high school student at the Riverdale Country School and worked with Nilay Yapici on Drosophilafeeding behavior in the summer of 2010. He returned in the summer of 2011 to continue this project and moved on to Brown University for undergraduate studies.

Isabel Leone
High School Intern

Isabel worked in the Vosshall Lab as a high school volunteer in the summer of 2018 as part of the Marymount School intern program.

Ashley Chanel Locoh
High School Intern

Ashley was a high school student at The Marymount School and worked in the Vosshall Lab as an intern in the Spring of 2018.

Louise Malle
SSRP Outreach Student

Louise was a student at the Lycee Francais de New York, in section “S”, concentrating in mathematics and sciences. She volunteered in the lab through the Outreach program in the summer of 2009, working with Matt DeGennaro on developing novel tools for manipulating genes in the mosquito Aedes aegypti. She went on to continue her scientific training as part of the NIH Post Bac program.

Brittany Marsh
High School Intern

Brittany was a high school student at The Marymount School and worked in the Vosshall Lab as an intern in the Summer of 2012.

Grace Matthews
SSRP Outreach Student

Grace was a high school student at Hotchkiss School and worked in the Vosshall Lab in the Summer of 2016 as part of the SSRP. She worked with Ali Ehrlich and Laura Duvall on neuropeptide modulation of mosquito host-seeking behavior. She went on to college at Harvard University in the Fall of 2017.

Lena Molyneux
High School Intern

Lena is a student at the High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College, and volunteered in the lab in the summer of 2018. She went on to undergraduate studies at Princeton University.

Alida Monaco
High School Intern

Alilda was a high school student at The Marymount School and worked in the Vosshall Lab as an intern in the Summer of 2016. She went on to college at Harvard University in the Fall of 2017.

Olivia Musmanno
High School Intern

Olivia Musmanno was a high school student at Marymount School of New York. She is interested in science and medicine and is helped the laboratory with its fly and mosquito projects.

Sophia Nicholls
High School Intern

Sophia volunteered in the lab in the summer of 2017 as part of the Marymount School internship program.

Jazmine Ottley
High School Intern

Jazmine worked in the lab in the summer of 2004, while a high school student in New York City.

Julia Ragde
High School Intern

Julia volunteered in the lab in the summer of 2017 as part of the Marymount School internship program.

Julia Ranocchia
High School Intern

Julia was a high school student at The Marymount School and worked in the Vosshall Lab as an intern in the Summer of 2016. She went on to college at Emory University in the Fall of 2017.

Vineeta Reddy
SSRP Outreach Student

Vineeta was a high school student at The Pingry School, working in the Vosshall Lab under the auspices of the Science Outreach program in the summer of 2013. She worked with Emily Dennis on mechanisms of DEET contact chemorepellency, and went on to do her undergraduate work at Princeton.

Grace Ronan
High School Intern

Grace was a high school student at the Marymount School of New York, and volunteered as an intern in the summer of 2015. She assisted with general lab operations.

Divna Scepanovic
High School Intern

Divna volunteered in the lab in the summer of 2017 as part of the Marymount School internship program.

Emily Scholler
High School Intern

Emily was a high school student at Marymount School of New York, who interned here in the Summer of 2013. She assisted with fly and mosquito operations. She went on to study neuroscience at Lafayette College, and returned to Rockefeller as a summer volunteer in 2015.

Russell Shephard
SSRP Outreach Student

Russell was a student at the Collegiate School and worked in the Vosshall lab in the summer of 2014 as part of the high school outreach program. He worked with Ben Matthews on the behavioral genetics of mosquito oviposition behavior, characterizing mutant strains and generating Matlab code to study flying behavior of mosquitoes in response to moisture cues.

Angela Skrivanek
High School Intern

Angela was a high school student at the Marymount School of New York and volunteered in the laboratory in the summer of 2014 as part of the Marymount intern program. She returned to the laboratory as a summer volunteer in 2015. She assisted with general laboratory operations during her time here, and went on to the University of Florida in 2015.

Sarabeth Spitzer
SSRP Outreach Student

Sarabeth worked with Lindy McBride on mosquito host-seeking behavior in the summer of 2010 as part of the high school outreach program. She devised quantitative methods to score mosquito scale and cuticle color and correlated this with host preference. She returned to the lab in the summer of 2011 to continue this project and enrolled in Harvard University in the fall of 2011. She enrolled in Stanford University Medical School in 2015 and went on to residency training in Boston.

Ahanaf Tajwar
High School Summer Intern

In the summer of 2021, Ahanaf was a high school student at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA and was a participant in the highly selective Prep for Prep leadership development program. Ahanaf worked with Olivia Goldman in the summer of 2021. He also supported general lab operations mentored by Libby Mejia.

Liza Tevelev
SSRP Outreach Student

Liza worked in the lab in the summer of 2006 while a high school student at the Dwight Englewood School. She worked with Kenta Asahina.

Naquia Unwala
High School Volunteer

Naquia was a high school student from Moorestown, NJ who volunteered in the lab in the summer of 2017, working with Ellen De Obaldia to identify human subjects with differential attractiveness to mosquitoes.

Sophia Villacorta
High School Intern

Sophia worked in the Vosshall Lab as a high school volunteer in the summer of 2019 as part of the Marymount School intern program.

Sarah Yeoh-Wang
SSRP Outreach Student

Sarah is a 2013 graduate of the Chapin School who worked with Roman Corfas on mosquito heat-seeking behavior and Conor McMeniman on mosquito genetics in the summer of 2011. Sarah returned to the lab in the summers of 2012 and 2013 to continue working with Roman Corfas on mosquito heat-seeking behavior. She moved on to Harvard College in the fall of 2013.

Ashley Zeledon
High School Summer Intern

In the summer of 2021, Ashley was a rising high school junior at the Dr. Richarch A. Vladovic Harbor Teacher Preparation Academy in Wilmington, CA. She was also taking classes at Los Angeles Harbor College in Wilmington, CA. She was a recipient of the Principals Award in 2019 and 2020. Ashley worked in the Vosshall lab in July 2021. She supported general lab operations mentored by Libby Mejia. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Mobeen Zohra
SSRP Outreach Student

Mobeen was a student at Ossining High School in Westchester in the Science Research Program. She volunteered in our lab in the summer of 2008, working with Maurizio Pellegrino on Orco structure-function and in the summer of 2009, working with Gabriel Gasque on larval feeding behavior. (Photo: Allan Zepeda, 2008)

VISITING SCIENTISTS (n=4)

Joel Lutomiah Ph.D.
Visiting Scientist

Joel is an Arbovirus Research Entomologist working with Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) where he heads the entomology section of the arbovirus and viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) laboratory. In spring 2012, Joel visited the Vosshall Laboratory on a 3-month training visit in connection with the research collaboration between KEMRI, the Vosshall Lab, and Jeff Powell’s lab at Yale University. Lutomiah has experience in virus-vector interactions and has keen interest in how vector distribution and vectorial capacity influence the epidemiology of arboviruses in Kenya. He also has interest in the population genetics and behavior of Aedes aegypti, an important vector of Yellow fever, dengue and chikungunya viruses both locally and regionally. He is currently enrolled at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenya, for his PhD in Medical Entomology and holds an MSc degree in Medical Entomology and Parasitology from the same university.

Emma Mullen
Visiting Scientist

Emma was a staff scientist at Intellectual Ventures Labs in Seattle, WA and spent a 3-month training visit in the Vosshall Laboratory, working on molecular biology and mosquito behavior in the spring of 2012.

Matthew Piper Ph.D.
Visiting Scientist

Matt studied biochemistry and molecular genetics in Australia, receiving a B Sc from the University of Adelaide and PhD from the University of New South Wales. He subsequently undertook postdocs in Jack Pronk’s laboratory at the Technical University of Delft in Holland and in Linda Partridge’s lab at University College London. Matt now has his own lab at UCL studying nutrition and ageing in Drosophilaand is funded by the Royal Society and BBSRC. He was a visiting scientist in the Vosshall lab from 2013-2015.

Pinich Wangsomnuk Ph.D.
Visiting Scientist

Pinich was a Visiting Scientist in the lab from 2001-2002 and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Khon Kaen University, Thailand.

STAFF MEMBERS (n=51)

Ariana Andrei
Summer Research Assistant

Ariana was a summer technician in 2003, working with Silke Sachse. She went on to graduate work in systems neurophysiology and is currently in film school in Canada

Felix Baier
Research Assistant

Felix earned a BSc/MA student at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he studied biology, physics, and philosophy. In the summer of 2011, he was a SURF student working with Matt DeGennaro on the genetics of mosquito host-seeking behavior. Felix returned to the lab in 2011-2012 as a guest researcher continuing the project to document the neurotranscriptome of Aedes aegypti. From July-December 2012, he joined as a Research Assistant, working with Lindy McBride on the genetics of host preference. Felix went on to PhD work in Hopi Hoekstra’s Lab at Harvard University in 2013. Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011

Kyrollos Barsoum
Research Assistant

Kyrollos is a 2017 graduate of Cornell University, where he earned a BS in Biological Engineering. He joined the Vosshall Laboratory in January 2017, and worked with Laura Duvall on the pharmacogenetics of host-seeking suppression. Kyrollos began medical school at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in the Fall of 2018.

Deborah Beck
Research Specialist I/Insectary Manager

Debby graduated with a B.S. in Animal Physiology from Cornell University and went on to distinguished service as a research associate at Yale University until relocating to New York City and joining the Vosshall Laboratory in 2010. She supports all aspects of our mosquito research program and was promoted in 2011 to the position of Manager of the Vosshall Lab Insectary. Debby retired from the lab in May 2012. Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011

Alana Bhajan
Research Assistant

Alana was the first technician in the lab and worked for the Vosshall lab from 2000-2001. She went on to a position as laboratory manager at Rockefeller.

Stephen Conway
Research Assistant

Steve is a 2010 graduate of Lafayette College, where he majored in neuroscience and minored in biotechnology/bioengineering. At Lafayette, he did an honors thesis in neuroscience, investigating the role of diet, specifically the Ketogenic Diet and caloric restriction, in ameliorating “epilepsy” in Drosophila melanogaster bang sensitive mutants. He also worked as a summer research intern at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. At Rockefeller, he worked with Gabriel Gasque and Mike Crickmore on innate behaviors in Drosophila from 2010 to 2012. Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011

Victoria Danan
Research Assistant

Victoria was a Hunter College post-bac pre-med student, who assisted Meg Younger in 2017 with her Kavli Neural Systems Institute project to develop a brain atlas of Aedes aegypti. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Rachel David
Research Assistant

Rachel received her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and worked as a research assistant in the lab for one year (2006-2007). She went on to Cornell Medical School.

Laura Dedmon
Part-Time Research Assistant

Laura received her BA in English at the University of Denver and was a post-bac pre-med student at Hunter College. She worked previously at Cornell University as a research aide at the Cornell Research Program on Self-injury and Recovery. From 2017-2020, Laura worked with Ellen De Obaldia on a project that seeks to understand why some people are more attractive to mosquitoes than others. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Alison Ehrlich
Research Assistant

Alison graduated from Vassar College where she majored in science, technology, and society studies with a minor in chemistry. She volunteered in the Vosshall Lab in the summers of 2013 and 2014, working with Laura Duvall on the regulation of mosquito host-seeking behavior by neuropeptides, and Ellen De Obaldia on the interaction between nutrition and egg production. She joined the Vosshall Lab as a research assistant in 2015 and departed for the NYU PhD program in 2017. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Jeremy Fenton
Research Assistant

Jeremy was a research assistant from 2003-2004 and went on to medical school at New York University School of Medicine.

Tom Gabel
Visiting Scientist, Vosshall Lab; Staff Associate, Duvall Lab, Columbia University

Tom has worked with a variety of invertebrate communities, in both field and laboratory settings. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he studied the impacts of climate change on the diversity and developmental stability of grasshopper assemblages in the Colorado Front Range. At California State University, East Bay, he investigated threats to native ant biodiversity in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the invasive Argentine ant, Linepithema humile. He then spent 3 years with the California Department of Fish & Wildlife on long-term monitoring projects studying the zooplankton and endangered planktivorous fish communities of the San Francisco Bay Estuary, including the endemic Delta Smelt, Hypomesus transpacificus. He joined the Duvall lab in the fall of 2019 as a Staff Associate, rearing and maintaining research colonies of Aedes aegypti for research into the neural mechanisms of blood-feeding behavior. From 2019-2020, he was based in the Vosshall Lab. Photo: Columbia University.

Austen Gess
Research Assistant

Austen worked in the lab from 2002-2004. She received her B.S. degree in Psychology from Fordham University. After working in our lab, Austen worked as an editorial assistant at the Journal of Cell Biology, Rockefeller University Press and at Elsevier and as a research assistant at Cornell University before returning to Hunter College for graduate school in psychology.

Zachary Gilbert
Research Assistant

Zach is a 2016 graduate of Boston University, from which he received a BS in Biology with a Minor in Electrical Engineering. He was a SURF in the laboratory of Jan Breslow at The Rockefeller University in 2010 and 2011, where he worked on the genetics of artherosclerosis. In the summers of 2012-2014, Zach worked in the lab of Charles Zuker, where he studied ant pheromone communication and mouse taste processing. From 2015-2016, Zach was an intern in the laboratory of Feng Zhang at the Broad Institute/MIT, in whose group he worked in improving the performance of CRISPR. He worked in the Vosshall Lab from 2016-2018 and supported the Aedes Toolkit Group, which is developing novel genetic reagents for the Aedes mosquito community. He went on to a position in a biotech startup. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Barbara Ghelardi
Administrative Assistant

Barbara previously was the administrator for laboratory of Markus Stoffel and joined our group in 2006. In the Vosshall Lab, Barbara expertly handled all aspects of laboratory administration until 2023. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Allison Goff
Research Assistant

Alli earned her undergraduate degree in Biology/Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and earned a Master’s Degree in bioethics at NYU. She began as a part time laboratory technician providing general lab support and was promoted to Research Assistant in 2012. She worked with Lindsay Bellani on the the question of why mosquitoes bite some people and not others as well as working with Conor McMeniman on mosquito CO2 chemoreception. She went on to a PhD program at Georgetown University in 2013. Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011

Chloe Goldman
Research Assistant

Chloe is a 2010 Cornell University graduate and joined the mosquito team in the summer of 2010 to support our new NIAID VectorBase Driving Biological Projects grant to decode the Aedesneurotranscriptome. She left the lab in 2012 for medical training at NYU Medical School. Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011

Iran Gomez M.D.
Clinical Study Coordinator

Iran received his M.D. from superior Medical Institute of Science, Villa Clara in Cuba. Iran has worked as a study coordinator at the Lovelace Scientific Resource center and the Clinical Research Center in Miami, FL. He served as clinical coordinator for the Rockefeller University smell study from 2005-2008, moved on to medical residency training in family medicine in Montgomery, AL, and is currently a practicing physician in Hoboken, NJ.

Zhongyan Gong
Research Assistant

Zhongyan is a 2018 graduate of the University of Michigan, where she was a neuroscience major. She transferred from the China Agricultural University, where she was an undergraduate in the Honors Program in Biological Sciences, College of Biological Sciences, with a double major in Law. At Michigan, she carried out a thesis entitled “Examining the role of a cortico-thalamic circuit in cue-motivated behaviors using chemogenetics” in the laboratory of Shelly Flagel. Prior to this, she worked in Xiangdong Li’s group at the China Agricultural University on adipose metabolism. In 2014, she was recipient of the Excellent Student Scholarship, Dahuanong Scholarship, 1st Place in Plant Field Study Projects, and 2nd Place in Animal Field Study Projects from the College of Biological Sciences, China Agricultural University. She joined the Vosshall Lab in July 2018, and is working with the Aedes Toolkit Group, mentored by Margo Herre and Veronica Jove. She went on to PhD training in the laboratory of Diana Bautista at UC Berkeley in Fall 2020. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Gloria Gordon
Laboratory Assistant II

Gloria joined the lab in June 2012 as a laboratory technician primarily responsible for managing all aspects of our insectary. Gloria was promoted to HHMI Laboratory Assistant II in 2013, and is the manager of our insectary. Gloria is a long-time member of the Rockefeller community and previously managed the HHMI glasswashing facility, as well as working in numerous laboratories on campus. She retired in August 2021. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Isabel Gutierrez
Laboratory Manager I

Isabel joined our lab as laboratory technician in the summer of 2009. While she was a senior at Hunter College, Class of 2009 Isabel helped our lab as a part-time lab technician and was later hired into a new full-time position made possible by an ARRA Stimulus Grant Supplement from NIDCD. She previously interned in the Rice Lab. In 2011, Isabel was promoted to manage Drosophila operations in the Vosshall Lab. In 2012, Isabel was promoted to Lab Manager and she served in this role until 2018. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Peggy Hempstead R.N.
Research Specialist I/Human Clinical Study Coordinator

Peggy received a B.S. from Columbia University and an M.A. degree from New York University, both in English Literature. She received a B.S. in Nursing from Cornell University-New York School of Nursing. She has worked on various clinical research projects at Rockefeller University and at other institutions in New York City. Peggy expertly coordinated all of our human smell studies until her retirement in 2016. (Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011)

Alison Hill
Research Assistant

Alison received her B.S. degree from Yale University in 2007. She majored in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and completed a senior thesis project with Dr. Peter Tattersall studying the novel pathogen Human Bocavirus. She worked in the Vosshall Lab from 2007-2009. First with Jenny Mehren on fly pheromone receptors, then with Mike Crickmore on sexual behavior and with Gabriel Gasque on the DmIh ion channel. Alison went on to the Harvard University virology PhD program in Fall 2009. (Photo: Allan Zepeda, 2008)

Jenny (Yi-Chen) Hsieh
Research Assistant

Jenny graduated with high honors and received her B.A. degree from Cornell University in 2008. She majored in biological sciences with a program of study in genetics and development. She conducted her undergraduate research on longevity pathways in C. elegans. She worked with Gabriel Gasque on Drosophila larval feeding behavior from 2008 to 2010. She went on to the Duke-NUS MD-PhD program in August 2010. (Photo: Allan Zepeda, 2008)

Christopher Ilch
Laboratory Manager

Chris was the first Vosshall lab manager from 2005-2006. He received his B.A. in Neuroscience & Behavior and English from Wesleyan University. He was previously a research assistant at Cornell University and a scientist at Memory Pharmaceuticals. He is currently a senior scientist at Amgen Corporation.

Irene Kalbian
Research Assistant

Irene received her B.A. degree from Columbia University in 2013. She coordinated the mosquito study led by Lindsay Bellani, which seeks to understand why some people are more attractive to mosquitoes than others. Since 2014, Irene has been working with Conor McMeniman on molecular and behavioral mechanisms of carbon dioxide perception in the mosquito. She moved on to a clinical research technician position at the Hospital for Special Surgery in May 2015. She went on to medical school at Thomas Jefferson University.

Katie Kistler
Research Assistant

Katie earned her undergraduate degree in Biology with a minor in Studio Arts from Pomona College in 2012, where she worked with Karl Johnson. She was a reserach assistant in the Vosshall Lab from January 2013 to March 2015. In our lab she worked with Ben Matthews to optimize CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technologies to study genes and behavior in the mosquito. She went on to a research assistant position at the Skirball Institute at NYU, working with Ruth Lehmann. Following that she moved to the University of Washington for graduate school.

Mona Liu
Research Assistant

Mona obtained her undergraduate degree in biochemistry with honors from Columbia College of Columbia University in 2020. She spent her junior year abroad studying biological sciences at Newnham College, University of Cambridge as part of the Columbia College Oxbridge Scholars Program. In 2018, she worked in Harris Wang’s lab at Columbia as part of the iGEM program, developing a test for pathogenic bacteria. At Cambridge in 2019, she worked in Mario De Bono’s lab developing techniques for regulated protein degradation in C. elegans. From 2019-2020, Mona worked in Marty Chalfie’s lab at Columbia, screening for mutations that affect touch receptor neuron ensheathment in C. elegans. She joined the Vosshall Lab in September 2020 to establish a mosquito microinjection facility and collaborated with Leah Houri-Zeevi on her mosquito mating project

Tonya Lester
Administrative Assistant

Tonya worked as an administrative assistant in the Vosshall Lab in 2004-2005.

Nia Lyn
Research Assistant

Nia earned a BS in Biology from Brandeis University in 2019 before joining the Vosshall lab. At Brandeis, she was an undergraduate research assistant in the Van Hooser lab and a recipient of the Posse Foundation leadership scholarship. While in college, she was also a summer intern in the Hurd Lab at the Icahn School of Medicine. Nia went on to join the David Rockefeller PhD program in the Fall of 2021. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Michael Miller
Laboratory Manager

Mike received his B.S. in Biology from Columbia University. Previously he was a senior research assistant at Columbia University and a senior research associate at Sentigen Biosciences. He was our laboratory manager in 2006.

Mana Mirjany
Research Assistant

Mana worked in the lab from 2001-2002 and went on to the PhD program at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Anjali Pandey
Research Assistant

Anjali received a BS in biochemistry with honors and a minor in mathematics from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Anjali was the recipient of a Chancellor’s Scholarship and was the founding president of the U Mass Boston chapter of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Prior to coming to Rockefeller in 2017, Anjali was a research assistant at Boston University and Sanofi Genzyme Pharmaceuticals. In the Vosshall Lab, Anjali supported the efforts of the Aedes Toolkit Group. She moved on in 2019 to pursue a PhD at Brandeis University. Photo: Trevor Sorrells

Thomas Paschke
Research Assistant

Thomas worked in the lab from 2003-2004 and returned to Berlin as an Instructor in biotechnology at the Emil-Fischer-School, Berlin, Germany.

Silvia Piccinotti
Research Assistant

Silvia is a 2006 graduate of Princeton University, where she worked with Becket Feierbach and Lynn W. Enquist in the Department of Molecular Biology. In the Vosshall lab, she worked on larval behavior with Matthieu Louis and feeding behavior with Shelli Farhadian. She moved on to the Harvard University PhD program in virology in 2008.

Katya Prakash
Research Assistant

Katya graduated in 2008 from Williams College where she received B.A. degrees in Chemistry and Economics. She worked with Takao Nakagawa on high-throughput screening for insect odorant receptor inhibitors from 2008-2010. Kat went on to medical school at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. (Photo: Allan Zepeda, 2008)

Sarah Puhr
Research Assistant

Sarah received a B.A. in Biology from Colorado College in 2008. She completed undergraduate research on the genetic analysis of a Salmonella transcription factor. She joined the lab in 2009, worked with Takao Nakagawa on high-throughput screening for novel insect odorant receptor inhibitors, and with Mike Crickmore on the regulation of male fly sexual behavior. She joined the Columbia Integrated PhD Program in 2010.

Anna Pearl Rivkin
Research Assistant

Pearl graduated magna cum laude from Stern College of Yeshiva University in January 2006 with a BA. She majored in Biology and also earned a minor in Judaic Studies. She worked in the Vosshall lab from January 2006-January 2009. In our lab, she worked with Takao Nakagawa and Maurizio Pellegrino, as our lead tissue culture technician screening for novel insect odorant receptor antagonists. Pearl went on to nursing school in 2009. (Photo: Allan Zepeda, 2008)

Tanya Rogoff
Research Assistant

Tanya worked in the lab from 2001-2003 and went on to graduate school in behavioral neuroscience at Rutgers University.

Marina Roselli
Smell Study Consultant

Marina earned a BFA (summa cum laude) in studio art and psychology from New York University in 2013. She served as a consultant for The Rockefeller University Smell Study, directed by Andreas Keller, from 2013-2014.

Lylyan Salas
Laboratory Technician

Lylyan worked in the lab from 2002-2005 while working toward her B.A. degree at Hunter College.

Laura Seeholzer
Research Assistant

Laura is a 2010 graduate of Cornell University, where she majored in biological sciences with a concentration in neurobiology and behavior in the College of Arts and Sciences and a global health minor. She joined the mosquito team in August 2010, and is an expert in measuring mosquito host-seeking behavior. She went on to join the Rockefeller University PhD program in September 2012 and carried out her thesis work in the laboratory of Vanessa Ruta. She went on to be a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow in the laboratory of David Julius at UCSF. Photo: Ronniedavidphotography.com, 2011

Doreen Strogies
Laboratory Assistant I

Doreen graduated from the Federal School of Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany where she trained to be a pharmaceutical technical assistant. She was was employed in formulation laboratories in various pharmacies in Germany and for a time worked for Robert Bosch Power Tools GmbH. In 2012, she worked in the tissue culture biotechnology division of Lonza Houston, Inc. Doreen joined the Vosshall Lab in Summer 2021 and supported all aspects of laboratory operations.

Jennifer Valdellon
Fly Stock Keeper

Jennifer maintained our fly stocks from 2001-2003, while a nursing student at Hunter College. She went on to join the nursing staff at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Kirsten Vannice
Research Assistant

Kirsten worked in the Vosshall Lab from 2004-2006. She received her B.A. degree in biology and sociology/anthropology from Swarthmore College. She went on to pursue a Master’s Degree in Public Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

Silvia Vasquez
Laboratory Technician

Sylvia worked in the lab from 2003-2005, while working toward her B.A. degree in Liberal Arts at the City University of New York.

Heike Wagner
Medical Technologist

Heike worked with Andreas Keller from 2004-2005. She received her Medical Technologist degree from State School for Medical Technicians of University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and went on to be a medical technologist in Germany.

Lyndsey Walsh
Smell Study Consultant

Lyndsey received a Bachelor’s in Individualized Studies from the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies at NYU in 2016. In 2018, she received a Masters of Biological Arts with Distinction for her research and dissertation at SymbioticA the Center of Excellence in Biological Arts at the University of Western Australia. She served as a consultant for The Rockefeller University Smell Study, directed by Andreas Keller, from 2018-2019. She is currently artist in residence in Peter Hegemann’s laboratory in Berlin. Learn more about Lyndsey’s art here.

Jermaine Watson
Laboratory Manager

Jermaine earned a B.S. in Animal Science at Rutgers University and a M.S. degree in Entomology at the University of Minnesota, where he worked on the genetics of malaria resistance in Anopheles gambiae. Since graduation, he has worked as both laboratory manager and assistant scientist at the University of Minnesota. He was our lab manager from 2008 to 2011 and went on to a career in health care business management.

Charlotte Weaver
Part-time Research Assistant

Charlotte is a 2011 graduate of Marymount School and interned in the Vosshall Lab in May 2011 and returned as a part-time technical assistant in the summer of 2011 and again as an insectary assistant in 2012. She is an undergraduate at Rhodes College.

Michele Wong
Smell Study Volunteer

Michele graduated from Linfield college in 2012, with a BA degree with honors in English literature, cum laude. While working toward a post-baccalaureate certificate program in pre-health careers at Hunter College, she volunteered for the Rockefeller University Smell Study, working on smell-testing with Julien Hsieh in 2015-2016.

Julie Zimmer
Administrative Assistant

Julie was the lab’s first administrator and worked for us from 2003-2005. She received her B.A. in Music Theater from Columbia College in Chicago. She is active in Broadway and musical theater in New York City and around the country.