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Graduate Students

NTMS Students


Name	Degree	Advisor
Amr Tolba	NTMS-Bio	James Riordan
Austin Boucher	NTMS-MS-Micro	James Riordan
Darryl Gibson	NTMS-Bio (self-fund)	James Riordan
Grant Hathaway		James Riordan
Koushik Majumder		James Riordan
Nataliya Galagan		James Riordan

M.S. Students

Ana Daniela Ramirez Torres

Advisor: Marcus Cooke

Abigail Lowenkron

BIO

Abby graduated from Eckerd College with a B. S. in Biology, and is now working on a Master’s thesis in Dr. Kristina Schmidt’s lab. She is researching the function of BLM protein in DNA replication and recombination.

Advisor: Kristina Schmidt

Caitlin Hathaway

BIO

Advisor: Huzefa Dungrawala

Lily Mcknight

BIO

Lily graduated with a B.S. degree from the University of Florida's Microbiology and Cell Science program in 2022. Throughout her degree, she participated in undergraduate research at the Emerging Pathogens Institute, predominantly studying Chlamydial genetics and viral genetics. In the Eswara Lab, Lily's interests revolve around S. aureus protein GpsB and elucidating how phosphorylation plays a role in its functionality and regulation.

Advisor: Prahathees Eswara

Sakshi Karra

BIO

Sakshi currently works with Dr. Kristina Schmidt studying Bloom Syndrome. Her current works specifically revolves around studying his rare inherited disease using laboratory-based techniques in maintaining genome integrity.

Advisor: Kristina Schmidt

Seth Brady-Johnson

BIO

Seth received undergraduate degree from the University of South Florida in Cell and Molecular Biology. Current thesis project involves the characterizing the phosphorylation of the A2AR GPCR protein and the role of different kinase enzymes influence this phosphorylation.

Advisor: Libin Ye

Isabelle Powell

BIO

Advisor: Maksym Bobrovskyy

Noelia Escamilla

BIO

Noelia's current research uses Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism to explore the different effects of bacteria in host proteostasis, focusing on its influence in amyloid beta aggregation in Alzheimer's Disease

Advisor: Sandy Westerheide

Miriam Cardena

BIO

Currently investigating the interplay between microbiome and protein homeostasis. This research focuses on how these bacteria may influence protein misfolding and aggregation, processes strongly associated with the onset and progression of neurodegenerative diseases.

Advisor: Sandy Westerheide

Wesley Wilmot

Advisor: Kathir Selvam

Ph.D. Students

Aidan McFarland

Bio

Aidan received his Bachelor's Degree in Biotechnology with a minor in Education from the University of Central Florida. As a PhD candidate, he is studying the underlying mechanisms of bioluminescence in red tide algae with Dr. Libin Ye's GPCR lab. His topics of interest include biodiversity, bioluminescence, and education

Advisor: Libin Ye

Alexis Coiner

Bio

Alexis is currently investigating hepatic epigenetic mechanisms of alcohol use disorder in vivo and in vitro utilizing techniques in mass spectrometry, immunofluorescent microscopy, flow cytometry, and qRT-PCR.

Advisor: Stanley Stevens

Amiratabak Rajaei

Bio

The current research is centered on stalled replication forks and the various proteins that participate in this matter using techniques such as Western blotting, DNA cloning, Mass spectrometry and Immunofluorescent microscopy.

Advisor: Huzefa Dungrawala

Anthony Nelligan

BIO

Anthony joined the Dungrawala lab in Spring 2021. His project focuses on characterizing how chromatin remodeling contributes to DNA replication fork stability. In particular, his project revolves around SNF2L, a motor protein in chromatin remodeling complexes, where its dysfunction causes replication forks to break down. Currently, he is defining which biochemical functions of SNF2L act to prevent DNA damage in S-phase.

Advisor: Huzefa Dungrawala

Arka Saha

BIO

Arka is a PhD graduate student in the department of Molecular Biosciences at USF. He has a master’s degree in biotechnology and medical engineering from NIT Rourkela in India. He has worked on metabolic reprogramming in Ovarian Cancer chemoresistance development at CNCI, Kolkata under the guidance of Dr. Sutapa Mukherjee. He started in the Fall 2023 as a member of OSG under the guidance of Dr. Marcus Cooke where he will be working on determining the structural proteins implicated in the molecular basis of chemoresistance development in Ovarian Cancer with respect to better therapy planning, and prevention of off target effects incurred during conventionally administration of platinated drugs.

Advisor: Marcus Cooke

Asher King

BIO

Asher received his B.S. from the University of South Florida in 2023. His research project focuses on how a bacterial tubulin-homolog, FtsZ is regulated and its spatiotemporal assembly. He is also interested in membrane proteins in Staph and Bacillus.

Advisor: Prahathees Eswara

Christina Thompson

Advisor: Maksym Bobrovskyy

Claudia Zamora Ciserno

Bio

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Advisor: Lindsey Shaw

Emilee Mustor

BIO

Current research focuses on exploring Staphylococcus aureus host-pathogen interaction using proteomic technologies.

Advisor: Lindsey Shaw

Emily Felton

BIO

Emily graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Tampa in spring 2020, with a B.S. in Molecular Biology. During the summer of 2019 Emily participated in an REU at the University of Georgia in the microbiology and entomology departments. Emily joined the Shaw lab in fall 2020 as a doctoral student, working on furthering our understanding of genetic diversity of Staphylococcus aureus clinical isolates.

Advisor: Lindsey Shaw

Erica Quintero

BIO

Erica graduated with a B.S in Biomedical Sciences and a minor in Health Science from the University of Central Florida in Summer 2021. She worked under Dr. Taj Azarian at UCF, where she learned how to create virtual environments and complete genome-wide association studies. She joined the Shaw Lab as a doctoral student in Fall 2023 where she uses genomic and bioinformatic approaches to study the pathogenesis of clinical A. baumannii and S. aureus strains.

Advisor: Lindsey Shaw

Erika Valdespino

BIO

Erika currently works in the Eswara Lab. She studies cell division proteins and how they relate to antimicrobial resistance in B. subtilis and S. aureus.

Advisor: Prahathees Eswara

Ganesha Kariyawasam

BIO

Ganesha has a Bachelor's degree with honors in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology from Sri Lanka. Her current research focuses on Bloom's syndrome helicase (BLM) and its potential protein interactions that help to maintain genome integrity and replication.

Advisor: Kristina Schmidt

Giorgio Schillaci

BIO

Giorgio Schillaci received his Bachelor and Master degree in Biotechnology from University of Milan-Bicocca and has 4 years experience in industrial R&D. His current research, under the leadership of Professor Varma, consists in studying the physical phenomena behind the behavior of biologic molecules, and develop more accurate parameters to describe them through the application of molecular and quantum mechanical tools.

Advisor: Sameer Varma

Haley Lockhart

BIO

Haley graduated with a B.S. in Biomedical Molecular Microbiology from the University of Central Florida in 2022. She worked as a lab technician under Dr. Mollie Jewett at the UCF Burnette School of Biomedical Sciences attempting to characterize a potential cell wall gene in the Lyme Disease causing bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. Haley was accepted into the Molecular Biosciences PhD program at the University of South Florida to work in the Oxidative Stress Group under the mentorship of Dr. Marcus Cooke. With the additional direction of Dr. Lindsey Shaw, Haley will be using the bacterial model Staphylococcus aureus to uncover the consequences on DNA damage repair in mammalian host cells during a bacterial infection.

Advisor: Marcus Cooke

Hafiza Nimra Ashraf

Advisor: Sameer Varma

Hiran Malinda Patabendige

BIO

Hiran obtained M.D from Ryazan State Medical University Russia in 2004 and my Executive Masters in Healthcare Administration from the International Institute of Health Sciences, Sri Lanka in 2018. Current research focus is working on rational structure-based drug design using X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy.

Advisor: Yu Chen

Irene Gutierrez

Bio

Irene earned her Master’s degree in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology from USF. Joined the department as a PhD student in Spring 2023 and is currently developing coarse-grained models for simulating biopolymers.

Advisor: Sameer Varma

Jazmine Virzi

BIO

Jazmine Virzi originally came from Hastings, Florida but moved to the Tampa Bay area during her undergraduate years. In 2019, she earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Molecular Biology from Eckerd College before joining the Department of Molecular Biosciences as a Ph.D. student. Currently, she is dedicated to conducting research in collaboration with Dr. Marcus Cooke, exploring the mechanisms of nuclear DNA damage formation and repair through the utilization and validation of urinary adductomics.

Advisor: Marcus Cooke

Jessica Trent

BIO

Jessica received her Bachelor of Science in biochemistry and is now working on her Ph.D. here at the University of South Florida. Her current research focuses on the human gut microbiome in relation to neurodegenerative diseases.

Advisor: Sandy Westerheide

Jing Chen

BIO

Jing obtained his Master's degree from the University of South Florida. Currently, his research is focused on exploring how oncogenes induce DNA damage and how these alterations affect the functionality of CMG helicase.

Advisor: Meera Nanjundan

Julian Melendez

BIO

Julian is currently developing polarizable models to be used in molecular dynamic simulations to better represent interactions between cations and biologically relevant macromolecules.

Advisor: Sameer Varma

Karla Castillo

BIO

Karla graduated with a B.S. Engineering in Nanotechnology and currently investigating protein interactions of 53BP1 and its role in p53 regulation using NMR, molecular dynamic simulations and cryo-EM.

Advisor: Gary Daughdrill

Kelly Resendes

BIO

Current research focuses on characterization of cell division on the molecular level in Bacillus subtilis as well as interspecies interactions between Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus subtilis.

Advisor: Prahathees Eswara

Logan Suits

BIO

A Tampa native all his life, Logan studies stress response in Staphylococcus aureus and fundamental biology in Bacillus subtilis.

Advisor: Prahathees Eswara

Malissa Fenton

BIO

Advisor: Gary Daughdrill

Marcelo Di Gruccio

BIO

Marcelo is currently investigating how the S289 region of MDMX's acidic domain interacts with the p53 binding domain of MDMX as well as the identification of secondary structures within the human BLM protein.

Advisor: Gary Daughdrill

Maria Cubero

BIO

Maria earned her Bachelor's degree in Biotechnological Engineering from the Technological Institute of Costa Rica. She started her Ph.D. studies in Dr. Yu’s lab in Spring 2024, and her current project focuses on studying the pathogenesis of Coagulase Negative Staphylococci (CoNS) in neonates.

Advisor: Wenqi Yu

Mary-Elizabeth Jobson

BIO

Mary-Elizabeth earned a B.S. in Microbiology and Cell Science from the University of Florida in the Spring of 2019. During her undergraduate career, she worked under Dr. Alfred Lewin developing therapeutics for retinal diseases before moving on to complete an internship with Andrew Schuerger at NASA’s Space Life Sciences Lab working with hypobarophile bacteria recovered from spacecraft. After graduating, she worked as a lab technician at Rapid Genomics, a high-throughput genotyping lab, before joining the doctoral program at USF in the Fall of 2020. Her primary goals in the Shaw lab are to characterize the complex regulatory networks governing Staph aureus pathogenesis.

Advisor: Lindsey Shaw

Matthew Saunders

BIO

Saunders is studying phospholipid membrane biophysics and membrane-ion interactions, via computational modeling.

Advisor: Sameer Varma

Rachel Washburn

BIO

Rachel is a 2nd year Cell and Molecular Biology PhD Student in the Shaw Lab. She graduated from USF with a B.S. in Microbiology in 2022. Her current research focuses on differential expression of Two Component Systems in S. aureus between in vitro and in vivo environments.

Advisor: Lindsey Shaw

Ran Zhang

BIO

Ran's work centers on "The function of single peptide for protein expression, localization and secretion".

Advisor: Wenqi Yu

Richard Agyen

BIO

Richard is a PhD student at the Bobrovskyy lab working on the mechanism of T7bSS in Staphylococcus aureus and the role of peptidoglycan hydrolase in T7bSS. He completed his Bachelors and initial Masters at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana. Richard completed a second Master's at the University of Michigan.

Advisor: Maksym Bobrovskyy

Saidiburkhaniddin Adikhanov

BIO

Saidiburkhaniddin is a PhD student studying the mechanisms of surface proteins localization and cell wall biosynthesis in Staphylococcus aureus and joined Dr Wenqi Yu lab in Fall 2023. Previously, he studied MSc in Biotechnology at the University of Edinburgh and worked on developing synthetic biology toolkits for cardiovascular disease diagnosis and treatment at the University of South Dakota.

Advisor: Wenqi Yu

Salvatore Scaffidi

BIO

Sal received his B.S. in Microbiology from USF in 2020 and is currently a PhD student in the Yu Lab. Our primary focus is understanding the biogenesis and pathogenesis related to the cell envelope of Staphylococcus aureus. His current project focuses on identifying and characterizing novel nonessential genes capable of spatially regulating surface protein trafficking in S. aureus.

Advisor: Wenqi Yu

Shehan Sahibdeen

BIO

Shehan holds an undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology. His current work revolves around BLM helicase in maintaining genome integrity

Advisor: Kristina Schmidt

Sydney Granack

Vedanth Bellad Shivashankar

Advisor: Kathir Selvam

Wenkai Sun

BIO

He is a 2023 Fall Ph.D. student in Dr. Ye’s lab. With five years of experience in working on metabolic pathway analysis of medicinal plants. Characterization of the structure and function of transmembrane proteins will become the career goal for him to continue to explore in future scientific research.

Advisor: Libin Ye

Xudong Wang

BIO

Xudong Wang hails from China and holds a Master's degree in Biological/Chemical Engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology. He was promoted to a Ph.D. student at Dr. Ye's Lab in 2022 and is currently majoring in Cell and Molecular Biology, with a passion for structural biology. Xudong is spearheading a research project aimed at advancing macromolecular 19F NMR.

Advisor: Libin Ye

Yaosheng Jia

BIO

Yaosheng earned his Bachelor's degree from City University of Hong Kong. He started his PhD study in Dr. Yu’s lab in Fall 2022, and his current project focuses on studying mechanisms of surface protein secretion and distribution.

Advisor: Wenqi Yu