Davy Deng is interested in understanding cancer’s evolutionary strategies towards chemoresistance as well as the constraints in its evolutionary paths. In the Beroukhim lab, he studied the genomic alterations of high grade gliomas and is developing computational pipeline to detect cell-free DNA from glioblastomas in the blood for rapid diagnosis and continuous disease monitoring. Davy holds bachelor’s degrees from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree from Harvard. He is now a PhD student in the Harvard-MIT HST MEMP program.

Fun fact: He used to be a fish doctor back when he lived in western China and once removed a small tumor from a shark.

Favorite quote: “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution” – Theodosius Dobzhansky

Yohanna joined the Beroukhim lab as an undergraduate student at Tufts University. She studied PPM1D as a therapeutic target for DIPG, with a specific interest in the effects of a truncating mutation in PPM1D as a contributor to cellular resistance to treatment, and in determining if this mutation in PPM1D is oncogenic in DIPG.

Fun fact: Beyoncé and Yohanna share a birthday.

Favorite quote: “Always remember where you came from, but never underestimate how far you can go.” –Joan Solotar

Jaeho primarily worked with clinical genomic data to identify genomic alterations that may help characterize various brain tumors for diagnostic, prognostic, and treatment purposes. He also focused on the genetic biomarkers for Avastin response in glioblastoma patients. He obtained an MD and Masters in Public Health from Harvard School and is now a resident in Neurology at Johns Hopkins.

Travis grew up in Hawaii and went to school at the University of California, Berkeley, double majoring in physics and integrative biology. He worked in Rameen’s lab as a graduate student in the biophysics program of Harvard University. While a member of the Lab, his research focused on uncovering new cancer vulnerabilities predicted by copy-number alterations using computational genomics. After obtaining his PhD, Travis enrolled in medical school at Harvard and MIT’s Health Sciences Technology program, and is now a resident at UCSF. Travis hopes to follow in the footsteps of Dr. Beroukhim as a successful oncology physician scientist.

Fun fact: In his free time, Travis is an avid hiker and amateur gardener.

William studied the genomic landscape of metastatic endometrial cancers and CYCLOPs genes as therapeutic targets in breast cancers as a graduate student in the Beroukhim Lab. He graduated from his MD-PhD studies in 2017, completed his residency in Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2019, and is now a fellow in Medical Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Guillaume received his medical degree from Strasbourg University and performed residency in pediatrics and oncology in Reims and Paris. He joined the Beroukhim Lab in 2012 to study genomic features of pediatric low-grade gliomas. He was awarded his PhD from the Paris University in 2015. Guillaume worked as a pediatric oncologist at Strasbourg University hospital before joining Roche pharma in Basel in the pediatric oncology department.

Fun fact: During his stay in the lab, Guillaume learned to appreciate Rameen’s jokes.

Favorite quote: “Quand on veut, on peut!”

Jeremiah grew up in Waseca, Minn., and studied applied physics at Cornell. He joined the Harvard MD-PhD program in 2010 and initially worked on radiation treatment planning software with David Craft. He joined the bioinformatics PhD program and Rameen Beroukhim’s lab in 2012, where he has worked on genome assembly, variant detection, and analysis of rearrangements in large collections of cancer genomes. He is the primary developer of the rearrangement detection tool SvABA and the SeqLib C++ sequence analysis API, and has worked extensively with data from ICGC. After receiving his PhD, he completed the last two years of medical school at Harvard and is a resident in Medicine at UCSF.

Fun fact: Jeremiah recently found a live rattlesnake on a hike in the Blue Hills near Boston but did not stop long enough to make its acquaintance.

Favorite quote: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” –Einstein

Melanie is a cytogeneticist and joined the Beroukhim lab as a visiting PhD student from Paris. She completed her postdoctoral medical training in neuropathology (Sainte-Anne Hospital, Paris, France). Melanie’s research interests include translational neuropathology and genomics of brain tumors. In the Beroukhim Lab, Melanie studied genomic drivers of pediatric low-grade gliomas, in addition to developing technologies that include methods to detect cell-free DNA in blood samples obtained from children with brain tumors and DNA-barcoding to identify combination therapies. She is now a practicing physician and is conducting postdoctoral research at St. Anne’s Hospital in Paris.

Favorite quote: “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” –Gandhi

Caitlin received her BS in molecular biology with a minor in editing from Brigham Young University. While at BYU, she worked in the lab of Laura Bridgewater, PhD, where she studied the function of a novel nuclear variant of BMP2 (nBMP2) in skeletal muscle, as well as the role of the unfolded protein response (UPR) in mouse models of osteoarthritis. She also worked in the lab of Steven Graves, PhD, studying the ability of a novel proteomic approach to identify differences between complex biological tissues, including normal and preeclamptic human placenta. Caitlin’s work in the Beroukhim Lab focused on identifying and validating a novel class of cancer vulnerabilities caused by loss of heterozygosity (LOH) of cell-essential genes. She also studied the role of TERC amplification in cellular immortalization/transformation. She received numerous awards for scientific communication in presenting her project, and after completing her PhD she joined 23&Me.