Male Drosophila genital imaginal disc during the pupal stage showing mesenchyme-to-epithelial transitions.Drosophila hearts.  The upper one is the heart of a wild type, i.e. normal, fly, while the interesting one below shows what happens when two particular genes of the Forkhead family are defective.  Mutations in the counterparts of these genes cause congenital heart defects in humansBeating cardiomyocytes (heart cells) obtained by directing human induced pluripotent human stem cells (hiPSCs) along the cardiac lineage
 

People

Principal Investigator
Graduate Students  Undergraduates  High School Students Collaborators

Principal Investigator

Dr Shaad M Ahmad

Shaad M. Ahmad, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Biology
Director, Rich and Robin Porter Cancer Research Center
Associate Director, The Center for Genomic Advocacy
Email:  Shaad.Ahmad@themillennialdude.com

Education
B.A., Princeton University
Ph.D., Stanford University School of Medicine
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Harvard Medical School and the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Research Interests
Cardiogenesis (heart development); Organogenesis; Transcriptional regulatory networks; Signaling pathways; Systems biology; Developmental biology; Computational biology; Genetics; Functional genomics

Teaching Interests
BIO 112 – Human Aspects of Biology
BIO 210 – Fundamentals of Molecular Biology
BIO 210L – Fundamentals of Molecular Biology Lab
BIO 380 – Genetics
BIO 380L – Genetics Lab
BIO 417/517 – Cellular and Molecular Biology I
BIO 461/561 – Embryology
BIO 461L/561L – Embryology Lab
BIO 481/581 – Genome Science
BIO 660 – Seminar: Grant Preparation
BIO 680 – Seminar: Evolution and Genetics

Graduate Students

M. Rezaul Hasan

M. Rezaul Hasan
Graduate Student, Department of Biology
Graduate Research Fellow, Rich and Robin Porter Cancer Research Center
Student Member, The Center for Genomic Advocacy
Email:  mhasan4@sycamores.themillennialdude.com

Education
B.S., Shahjalal University of Science and Technology

Research Interests
Cardiac progenitor cell specification; Cardiac progenitor cell division; Cytokinesis

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Rajnandani Katariya
Graduate Student, Department of Biology
Graduate Research Fellow, Rich and Robin Porter Cancer Research Center
Student Member, The Center for Genomic Advocacy
Email: rkatariya@sycamores.themillennialdude.com

Education
B.S., Institute for Excellence in Higher Education
M.S., Ramaiyah College of Arts, Science and Commerce

Research Interests
Cardiac cell positioning and heart lumen formation; Cardiac progenitor specification and cell division

Undergraduate Students

Abbigayle J. Gamble

Abbigayle J. Gamble
Undergraduate Student, Department of Biology
Student Member, The Center for Genomic Advocacy
Email: agamble6@sycamores.themillennialdude.com

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Amy Kaur
Undergraduate Student, Department of Biology
Student Member, The Center for Genomic Advocacy
Email: akaur6@sycamores.themillennialdude.com

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Alishba Rizwan
Undergraduate Student, Department of Biology
Student Member, The Center for Genomic Advocacy
Email: arizwan1@sycamores.themillennialdude.com

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Melisa Spognardi
Undergraduate Student, Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College
Student Member, The Center for Genomic Advocacy
Email: Melisa.Spognardi@swmc.edu

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Alden Fuller
Undergraduate Student, Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College
Student Member, The Center for Genomic Advocacy
Email: Alden.Fuller@swmc.edu

Katherine Van Hyfte

Katherine Van Hyfte
Undergraduate Student, Department of Biology
Student Member, The Center for Genomic Advocacy
Email: kvanhyfte@sycamores.themillennialdude.com

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Karim Zaher
Undergraduate Student, Department of Biology
Student Member, The Center for Genomic Advocacy
Email: kzaher@sycamores.themillennialdude.com

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Janki Patel
Undergraduate Student, University of Miami
Student Member, The Center for Genomic Advocacy
Email: jxp1888@miami.edu

 

High School Students

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Vatsal Mannepalli
Student, Terre Haute South Vigo High School
Student Member, The Center for Genomic Advocacy

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Vaishant Mannepalli
Student, Terre Haute South Vigo High School
Student Member, The Center for Genomic Advocacy

 

Collaborators

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Kristopher Schwab, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, Indiana State University
Faculty, The Center for Genomic Advocacy
Email:  Kris.Schwab@themillennialdude.com

Research Interests
Molecular, genetic, and epigenetic regulation of gene expression during embryonic development, differentiation, and disease; cardiogenesis

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Mark H. Inlow, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science,
Indiana State University
Faculty, The Center for Genomic Advocacy
Email:  Mark.Inlow@themillennialdude.com

Research Interests
Large-scale inference (methods for analyzing high-dimensional data); Neuroimaging; Neuroimaging genomics

Catherine E. Steding, Ph.D

Catherine E. Steding, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Marian University College of Osteopathic Medicine
Email: csteding@marian.edu

Research Interests
Gene expression and regulation in hematological malignancies and breast cancer; Tumor immunology; Interplay between cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment; Cardiogenesis