The Genetics and Epigenetics Program (G&E) was established in 2017. Many of its faculty and students were formerly in three different GSBS programs, which were phased-out in 2017: Epigenetics & Molecular Carcinogenesis (EMC), Genes & Development (G&D), and Human Molecular Genetics (HMG). In 2017, the students in these three programs elected to be “unofficially affiliated” with the G&E program and are therefore listed here. 

2024 Graduates

Jace Aloway, PhD (Advisor: Richard Behringer, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “The Role of Wt1 in Müllerian Duct Development”
Position after graduation: to be determined

Vahid Bahrambeigi, PhD (Advisor: Anirban Maitra, MBBS)
PhD Thesis: “Analyzing Extracellular Vesicles for Disease Monitoring in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer Patients”
Position after graduation: Postdoctoral fellow, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX

Safia Essien, PhD (Advisor: George Eisenhoffer, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “A Signal to Divide: Apoptotic Extracellular Vesicles as Carriers of Mitogenic and Immunogenic Signals”
Position after graduation: Administrative Postdoctoral fellow, Office for Postdoctoral Fellos, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX

Jared Fradette, MS (Advisor: Don Gibbons, MD, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “Assessing the Temporal Role of miR-200 Loss in Murine Models of NSCLC”
Position after graduation: Research Investigator, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX

Dalia Hassan, PhD (Advisor: Jichao Chen, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “The Role of the Transcription Factor CEBPA in Regulating Lung Alveolar Type 2 Cell Fate in vivo”
Position after graduation: Postdoctoral fellow, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY

Celine Kong, PhD (Advisor: Jichao Chen, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “Uncovering Capillary Endothelial Cells Response During Lung Injury-Repair”
Position after graduation: Postdoctoral Scientist, Eli Lilly & Company, Indianapolis, IN

Renee Rubiano, MS (Advisor: Margarida Santos, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “Exploring the Role of the Arginine-Methylation Writer-Reader Pair PRMT5/SND1 in JAK2-Mutant Myeloproliferative Neoplasms”
Position after graduation: PhD Student, MD Anderson UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, TX

Sreepradha Sridharan, PhD (Advisor: Michael Galko, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “Investigating the Role of Insulin-Like Signaling in Paclitaxel-Induced Nociceptive Hypersensitivity Using Drosophila Melanogaster”
Position after graduation: to be determined

Ruoyu Wang, PhD (Advisor: Wenbo Li, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “Dissecting the roles of human SMC complexes in transcription regulation and chromatin organization”
Position after graduation: Postdoctoral fellow, UTHealth Houston McGovern Medical Center, Houston, TX

Tanner Wright, PhD (Advisor: Mark Bedford, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “A Study of the SND1/PRMT5 Axis in Liver Cancer by Genetic Mouse Models”
Position after graduation: Postdoctoral fellow, Ludwig Maximilians University, Planegg-Martinsried/Munich, Germany

Hanghui Ye, PhD (Advisor: Nick Navin, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “A Pan-Cancer Single-Cell Analysis of Intratumoral Copy Number Diversity and Evolution”
Position after graduation: Research fellow, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA

2023 Graduates

Lana Al Hasani, MS (Advisor: Wenbo Li, PhD)
MS Thesis: "Elucidating the Direct Role of m6A in the Human Transcriptome"
Position after graduation: PhD Student, MD Anderson UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, TX

Dhruv Chachad, PhD (Advisor: Guillermina Lozano, PhD)
PhD Thesis: "Unique Transcriptional Profiles Underlie Osteosarcomagenesis Driven by Different p53 Mutants"
Position after graduation: Postdoctoral fellow, Lab of Guillermina Lozano, PhD, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center 

Sun Chang, PhD (Advisor: Guillermina Lozano, PhD)
PhD Thesis: "Functional Analysis of Daxx in Tumorigenesis of Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors and Embryonic Development"
Position after graduation: to be determined

Maxsam Donta, MS (Advisor: Pierre McCrea, PhD)
MS Thesis: "p120-catenin subfamily members have distinct as well as shared effects on dendrite morphology during neuron development in vitro"
Position after graduation: MD/PhD Student, UTMB, Galveston, TX

Jovanka Gencel Augusto, PhD (Advisor: Guillermina Lozano, PhD)
PhD Thesis: "p53 dimers elicit unique tumor suppressive activities through a novel transcriptional program"
Position after graduation: Postdoc Scholar, University of California, San Francisco, CA

Malcolm Moses, PhD (Advisor: Richard Behringer, PhD)
PhD Thesis: "Genetic Regulation of Müllerian Duct Regression"
Position after graduation: Postdoctoral Fellow, lab of Richard Behringer, PhD, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center 

Mabel Perez-Oquendo, PhD (Advisor: Don L. Gibbons, MD, PhD)
PhD Thesis: "Regulation and Function of ZEB1 Acetylation in Lung Adenocarcinoma Progression and Metastasis"
Position after graduation: Postdoctoral fellow, Education & Training, MD Anderson, Houston, TX

Tolkappiyan Premkumar, PhD (Advisor: Francesca Cole, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “Genetic analysis of crossover defective mouse spermatocytes reveals discrete crossover precursor intermediates”
Position after graduation: Postdoctoral fellow, Lab of Dr. SaraH Zander, Ph.D., Stowers Institute, Kansas City, MO 

Raisa Reyes Castro, PhD (Advisor: Swathi Arur, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “Role of Phosphorylated DICER1 in Tumor Progression”
Position after graduation: MD/PhD Student, University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico

Yang Zeng, PhD (Advisor: Taiping Chen, PhD)
PhD Thesis: "Regulation of de novo and Maintenance DNA Methylation by DNMT3A and DNMT3B"
Position after graduation: to be determined

2022 Graduates

Shannon Erhardt, MS (Advisor: Jun Wang, PhD)
MS Thesis: “Yap and Taz are Required for Neural CrestDerived Cardiovascular Development”
Position after graduation: PhD Student, MD Anderson UTHealth Houston Graduate School

Russell Irwin, MS (Advisor: Michael Green, PhD)
MS Thesis: “Cell-free DNA Sequencing in Multiple Myeloma”
Position after graduation: to be determined

Naeh Klages-Mundt, PhD (Advisors: Lei Li, PhD & Bin Wang, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “Development of the ARK Assay for Quantitating DNA - Protein Crosslink Accumulation and Fanconi Anemia Pathway Involvement in the Repair Process”
Position after graduation: to be determined

Lalit Patel, PhD (Advisor:, Michelle Barton, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “Genomewide CRISPR/Cas9 Screen Identifies Network of Protein Complexes that Regulate TRIM24”
Position after graduation: Research Associate, lab of Guillermina Lozano, PhD, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Hieu Van, PhD (Advisor: Margarida Albuquerque Almeida Santos, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “Plant Homeodomain Finger Protein 20 (PHF20) and its Homolog PHF20 Like 1 (PHF20L1) Define Two Distinct Non-Specific Lethal (NSL) Complexes”
Position after graduation: Postdoctoral Fellow, lab of Dr. Kai Ge, NIH, Bethesda, MD

Brandy Walker, MS (Advisor:, Rachel Miller, PhD)
MS Thesis: “The Novel Role of Dnmbp in Kidney Development”
Position after graduation: PhD Student, MD Anderson UTHealth Houston Graduate School

2021 Graduates

Amelie Albrecht, PhD (Advisor: Xuetong Shen, PhD) - EMC
PhD Thesis: “The functional analysis of a major tyrosine phosphorylation site on actin”
Position after graduation: Postdoctoral Fellow, Lab of Fan Liu, PhD,Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP), Berlin, Germany

Erin Atkinson, PhD (Advisor: Bin Wang, PhD) - G&E
PhD Thesis: “NPSD4: A new player in the DNA damage response”
Position after graduation: Genetic Counseling Program student, MD Anderson UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, TX

Ruth Barros De Paula, MS (Advisor: John Tainer, PhD) - G&E
MS Thesis: “Unveiling global roles of G-quadruplexes and G4-22 in human genetics”
Position after graduation: PhD Student, Baylor College of Medicine PhD Program, Houston, TX

Alexandria Blackburn, PhD (Advisor: Rachel Miller, PhD) - G&E
PhD Thesis: “A novel role for DYRK1A in kidney development”
Position after graduation: Clinical Research Program Coordinator, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics, MD Anderson, Houston, TX

Jianji Chen, PhD (Advisor: Mark Bedford, PhD) - EMC
PhD Thesis: “Discovery of novel ubiquitin- and methylation-dependent interactions using protein domain microarrays”
Position after graduation: Sr. Biomarker Discovery Scientist, IDEXX, Westbrook, ME

Rachel Dittmar, PhD (Advisor: Subrata Sen, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “Mutant KRAS Alters Extracellular Vesicle MicroRNA Sorting in Pancreatic Cystic Neoplasms”
Position after graduation: Postdoctoral Fellow, Lab of Nick Navin, PhD, MD Anderson, Houston, TX

Ahmed Emam, MS (Advisor: Bin Wang, PhD) - G&E
MS Thesis: “Investigating the role of Abro1 in DNA damage-induced immune response”
Position after graduation: PhD Student, MD Anderson UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, TX

I-Lin Ho, PhD (Advisors: Giulio Draetta, MD,PhD and Andrea Viale, MD) - G&D
PhD Thesis: “Epithelial memory of resolved inflammation limits tissue damage while promoting pancreatic tumorigenesis”
Position after graduation: Postdoctoral Fellow, Lab of Andrea Viale, MD, MD Anderson, Houston, TX

Pranavi Koppula, PhD (Advisor: Boyi Gan, PhD)
PhD Thesis: “Investigating therapeutic strategies to target metabolic vulnerabilities of NSCLC tumors with mutant KEAP1 Gene”
Position after graduation: Scientist, Forma Therapeutics, Watertown, MA

Zian Liao, MS (Advisor: Wenbo Li, PhD) - G&E
MS Thesis: Manipulating enhancer RNA activity to study their roles in gene regulation and cancer”
Position after graduation: PhD Student, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX

Lorena Maili, PhD (Advisor: Jacqueline Hecht, PhD) - HMG
PhD Thesis: “Genetic pathway analysis of abnormal facial development in nonsyndromic cleft lip and palate”
Position after graduation: Postdoctoral Fellow, Lab of Jacqueline Hecht, PhD, McGovern Medical School, Uthealth, Houston, TX

Shucheng (Anna) Miao, MS (Advisors: Michelle Barton, PhD and Gigi Lozano, PhD) - G&E
MS Thesis: “TRIM24 promotes mammary tumor development by upregulating metabolic reducing power”
Position after graduation: PhD Student, MD Anderson UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, TX

Odemaris Narváez del Pilar, PhD (Advisor: Jichao Chen, PhD)- G&E
PhD Thesis: “Regulation of lung mesenchymal cells by epithelial Wnt ligands”
Position after graduation: Current Position: Completing medical school in Puerto Rico

Phuoc Nyguen, MS (Advisor: Wenbo Li, PhD) - G&E
MS Thesis: TBA
Position after graduation: PhD Student, MD Anderson UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, TX

Melinda Soeung, PhD (Advisors: Giulio Draetta, MD,PhD and Giannicola Genovese, MD,PhD) - G&D
PhD Thesis: “Understanding the pathogenesis of renal medullary carcinoma”
Position after graduation: Postdoctoral Fellow, Lab of Giulio Draetta, MD,PhD, MD Anderson, Houston, TX