Brittany earned her biology degree from UC Irvine and began her career as an industry scientist at Allergan. She completed a Ph.D. in neuroscience at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where her dissertation characterized the first recurrent gene found in glioblastoma, FGFR3-TACC3. As a T32 fellow between Rice University and MD Anderson, she focused on translational therapeutics for FGFR3-TACC3+ patients. Recognizing her strengths in leadership and strategy, she transitioned into scientific administration as Director of Cancer Neuroscience at MD Anderson. She was later recruited to Lindonlight Collective to build and manage a $100M global research portfolio advancing pediatric brain cancer diagnostics and therapeutics. At DFCI, she leads strategic operations for the PLGA Program, coordinating efforts across the institute and international collaborators.

Fun fact: As a mom to three young sons, Brittany is intent on instilling a “do-it-yourself with a sense of urgency” mindset, and believes she was a Navy Seal in her past life. When she’s not working, practicing baseball, fishing with her sons, or buying the newest power tool at Home Depot, you can find her landscaping, digging trenches, refinishing furniture, power washing, or detailing her car.

Favorite quote: “Be the reason someone believes in the goodness of people.” -Karen Salmansohn

Siyun is an Associate Computational Biology originally from Greenville, NC. After spending four years at Duke studying Molecular/Cell Biology and Computer Science, he decided that he was tired of North Carolina (for the time being) and escaped to Massachusetts. Siyun spent four years of undergrad in the Poss Lab, where he studied novel transcriptional complexes and p-bodies involved in Zebrafish heart regeneration. Now he spends most of his time debugging code instead of injecting embryos and genotyping.

Fun Fact: Siyun grew up in a family of martial arts masters. His father and five of his brothers all have at least a seventh degree black belt in Taekwondo, and most of their children grew up practicing Taekwondo. (Note to Rameen: be nice to Siyun.)

Quote: “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” – Robert Heinlein

Dr. Ramen is Rameen’s beloved office mate formed from a beautiful Persian rug, a lab sweatshirt, a packet of ramen, and Rameen’s own Cambridge graduation hat. Dr. Ramen enjoys long walks on the beach and observing Rameen’s meetings. Dr. Ramen has never once laughed at any of Rameen’s jokes.

Circa early May 2023, Dr. Ramen began a sabbatical of indefinite length at UiB in Bergen, Norway. He felt they really rolled out the red carpet for his arrival and enjoyed a successful stay overseas. After about a year abroad, Dr. Ramen returned to Boston with lots of interesting stories.

Favorite food: oatmeal raisin cookies and ramen (Rameen’s edit: oatmeal raisin cookies are disgusting)

Fun Fact #1: Dr Ramen was created by several lab members after Rameen shared his office key during COVID. The moral: sharing your office key with Beroukhim lab members is never a good idea.

Fun Fact #2: Providing these same lab members the admin password to your lab website is also never a good idea. You may find new lab members start appearing who are actually carpets.

Corel was born in Benin (West Africa) and lived there for the first six years of his life, learning French and Fon in the process. He later moved to the United States with his parents and has since lived in a plethora of states including Nebraska, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, and Massachusetts again. He spent four years reveling in the beauty of Upstate New York where he attended Cornell University and graduated in 2022 with a B.S. in Biological Sciences (concentrating in Neurobiology and Behavior). At Cornell, he conducted research in the lab of Dr. Vimal Selvaraj and studied degradation of the Steroidogenic Acute Regulatory (StAR) protein. Corel is excited to work in the Beroukhim Lab and study the role of mismatch repair deficiencies in GBM, before proceeding to medical school.

Fun Fact: Corel once tried to pick up breakdancing, but the resulting hole in the wall caused by the collision between his foot and the flimsy drywall of his parents’ new house quickly deterred him from that hobby. As an unrelated fun fact, Corel still can’t swim despite it being a college graduation requirement.

Favorite Quote: “When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.” – Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist 

Hailing from Port Harcourt, Nigeria, Wolu traveled some 8000 miles across the Atlantic (and many more in between) to earn her B.S. in cell biology and computational sciences at Minerva University. Her passion for cancer biology and resolve to take continuous strides towards a better understanding of the disease, and eventual cure, inspires her work as an Associate Computational Biologist in the Beroukhim lab where she investigates copy number alterations and structural variant signatures in cancers.

Favorite quotes: 

“For everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven” – King Solomon 

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any” – Alice Walker

Rose is from San Francisco and studied computer science and biomedical engineering at Middlebury and Dartmouth Colleges. In the Beroukhim Lab, she helps develop methods to better understand patterns of microhomology near structural variant breakpoints. After successfully managing to escape Rameen’s reign, she moved to Bergen, Norway to help analyze endometrial cancer sequencing data. Rose is looking forward to beginning medical school next fall.

Fun fact: While in Boston, Rose ran a dog-walking & dog-sitting business and once had three dogs from three different families staying in her apartment (don’t tell her landlord!).

Favorite quote: “I’m cool with being conservative.” – Rameen Beroukhim (Rameen’s edit: context is everything)

Shu is from Buffalo Grove, IL and graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in Biological Sciences and a minor in Biometry and Statistics. During her undergraduate studies, Shu performed research in the Schimenti Lab at Cornell University surrounding the genetics of infertility, and completed her thesis on identifying genetic variants in the regulatory regions of infertility genes through computational analysis and experimental validation. In the Beroukhim lab, Shu has been developing methods to detect rearrangements that drive cancer.

Fun Facts: Shu enjoys fermenting food (such as kimchi and kombucha), reading and writing poetry, and playing badminton.

Andrew is a group leader in the Cancer Program at the Broad Institute of MIT. He led the Broad Institute’s effort to analyze somatic DNA copy-number alterations for The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Now, Andrew and Rameen Beroukhim are co-principal investigators of the Broad Institute’s copy-number Genome Data Analysis Center for the National Cancer Institute’s Genomic Data Analysis Network (GDAN). Andrew holds a PhD in molecular genetics from Ohio State University and a BA in biology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Favorite quote: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” – John Lennon

Sangita earned a PhD in biomedical sciences from The University of Texas at MD Anderson Cancer Center (though much of the research took place at Cornell), where she studied aging in yeast. She now studies the consequences of mismatch repair deficiencies in gliomas.