Head of Lab
Lamia did her graduate work at the Carnegie Institute's Dept of Embryology, located on the Hopkins campus. There she worked on R-loops in budding yeast under the mentorship of Douglas Koshland. For her postdoc she moved to Andy Fire's lab at Stanford to study small RNA systems in the free-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. She joined Rockefeller as an assistant professor in 2023.
On weekends Lamia has been walking 20k steps a day exploring NYC. She has also made it a mission to pick a new bakery every week for Lab Meeting Pastries.
Graduate Student (joined Aug 2023)
Yakshi first made her way to research as an undergraduate at DTU in Delhi, India. While there she worked on sequencing pediatric genetic disorders. This inspired her to do a Masters in Human Genetics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. After that, she joined Rockefeller as a Research Assistant in David Allis' lab, where she studied Cancer Epigenetic. In the Wahba Lab Yakshi has made a full transition to basic science research, studying the role of small RNAs in DNA damage and repair.
Outside of lab Yakshi can be found in the kitchen trying to replicate her mom's Indian cooking.
Research Assistant (joined Nov 2022)
Kimberly is a founding member of the Wahba lab, showing up at Rockefeller even before Lamia did! Kimberly is an expert teacher, having spent the last decade teaching math and science to middle and high school students in the NYC public school system. The COVID era re-ignited her passion for research, which she had gotten a taste of while an undergraduate at Williams College, studying heat shock proteins in zebrafish. In the Wahba Lab she is exploring small RNA pathways in non-C. elegans nematodes.
On the weekends you can find Kimberly running tours of the Morris-Jumel Mansion, the oldest surviving house in Manhattan!
Research Assistant (joining Sept 2024)
Ipek grew up in Istanbul, Turkiye and made her way to the US as an undergraduate. She graduated from Swarthmore College in 2024 with a double major in CS and Biology. There, she studied the initiation of the cardiac cell lineage and the evolutionary conservation of the cardiac gene regulatory network in sea squirts. In the Wahba Lab she is continuing Gabe’s project, working to understand the evolutionary dynamics and long-term implications of endogenous siRNA-mediated gene silencing via RNA sequencing experiments and statistical data analysis.
In her free time, Ipek likes to read fiction for a change.
Graduate Student (joined July 2024)
Xander grew up in Chicago and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2021 with a major in biochemistry. At Penn, he studied genetic conflict at the fruit fly telomere. This inspired him to pursue a post-baccalaureate research position at the NIH, where he continued to study epigenetics and fell in love with fission yeast while working on mechanisms of RNA-mediated gene silencing. Xander joined Rockefeller as a graduate student in 2023, where he hopes to study the impact of epigenetics on adaptive evolution.
Outside of the lab, Xander can be found cooking, biking, or walking very quickly around NYC.
<aside> 🤔 Interested in what we do? We are always on the lookout for passionate grad students and postdocs!
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Gabe Hatto, RA ’23-24
Gabe graduated from Cornell University in 2023 with a degree in molecular biology. There, he worked on defining the gene regulatory architecture of color patterning in butterfly and moth wings with Bob Reed. In the Wahba Lab, he worked on quantitatively understanding the evolutionary dynamics and long-term implications of endogenous siRNA-mediated gene silencing via RNA sequencing experiments and statistical data analysis. He is leaving to start a PhD in Genetics, Genomics, and Systems Biology at the University of Chicago in September 2024.
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