Lab Members | Sternberg Lab

Bren Professor of Biology

Postdoctoral Fellows

I am interested in using proteomic methods to study the composition of C. elegans Excreted/Secreted products and the roles they play in regulating the molting cycle and growth rate, defense against bacterial infection, pathogen susceptibility are under investigation currently.

Mengyi Cao

Postdoctoral Scholar Fellowship Trainee in Biology and Biological Engineering

I'm studying microbial symbiosis in between the entomopathogenic (insect-parasitic) nematode Steinernema carpocapsae and its beneficial bacterium Xenorhabdus nematophila as a naturally occurring mutualistic symbiosis system.

Yan Jin

Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Biology and Biological Engineering

I’m interested in the basic molecular mechanism of human disease related genes in C.elegans and large-scale screen methods by using transposons.

Hillel Schwartz

Scientific Research Assistant

I am developing whole animal-transcriptomes as phenotypes for use in genetic analysis.

James Chien-Hsiang Tan

Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Biology and Biological Engineering

A focus of my research involves the migration of the male linker cell in C. elegans.

Olivia Xuan Wan

Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Biology and Biological Engineering

Graduate Students

Katherine Brugman

I discovered roles for the mechanoreceptor piezo in C. elegans male mating behavior.

Cynthia Chai

Graduate Student

I'm broadly interested in the neural and genetic basis of C. elegans diapause entry. I currently study the roles of a) the first-layer amphid interneurons and b) the transcription factor FKH-7 in mediating the dauer entry decision.

Sarah Cohen

Graduate Student

I study the roles of o-acyltransferases and esterases in the formation of ascarosides, pheromone-like small-molecules used for communication and behavior mediation, in the nematode C. elegans.

Elizabeth Holman

Graduate Student

I am interested in spectroscopy of biological systems.

Sharan Prakash

Graduate Student

I’m interested in the sensory dynamics of dauer formation in C. elegans.

Sandy Wong

Graduate Student

I am interested in the functional consequences of ASD-associated missense variants in neurological development and behaviors.

Mark Zhang

Graduate Student

I am focusing on factors governing the dauer exit decision and how it relates to those of dauer entry. I am also interested in exploring how C. elegans retains neurological memory of whether or not it has undergone the dauer process.

Staff

Shahla Gharib

Research Technician

Stephanie Nava

Research Technician Assistant

I am interested in expanding cGAL and split cGAL, a genetic tool using the GAL4-UAS system in C. elegans for transgene control.

Wilber Palma

Research Technician Assistant

One of the projects I'm working on involves a GAL4-UAS based genetic tool. I'm looking to expand our toolkit through the building of “drivers” for neuron specific transgene control. I am also part of a project that seeks to generate C. elegans null mutants.

Heenam Park

Research Scientist

One of the projects I'm working on focuses on generating new null mutants in C. elegans. I use CRISPR/Cas9 based simple and efficient knock-in methods such as STOP-IN cassette insertion.