Amanda Amodeo
Position: Principal Investigator
Education : B.S. UW Madison, 2008; Ph.D. Stanford University, 2014
Interests : Amanda is interested in how cells and organs make the measurements that allow them to make biological decisions. She is particularly interested in cellular decision making in the context of embryonic development. That is, how cells monitor their developmental stage, position, and size in order to correctly differentiate into the right cell types at the right time.
Shruthi Balachandra
Position : Postdoctoral Scholar
shruthi.balachandra@dartmouth.edu
Education: B.S. University of Mysore, 2004; M.S. University of Mysore 2006; Ph.D. University of Mysore, 2014
Interests: A single cell in collectively growing populations has to regulate its internal contents to maintain its optimum size, and it interacts with its neighbors to determine the organ size. I’m interested in exploring how a nurse cell decides its internal contents and how that influences the organ size of the egg chambers of Drosophila ovaries.
Anusha Bhatt
Position : PhD student
anusha.d.bhatt.gr@dartmouth.edu
Education: BS-MS Dual degree, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Thiruvananthapuram, India, 2021
Interests: How do cells know when to grow, divide, or differentiate? How do differing rates of nuclear import and incorporation of biomolecules into chromatin affect transcription in early embryos? Anusha aims to use the early drosophila development as a model to understand developmental decision making in cells!
Eric Alpert
Position : PhD Student
Education: B.S. College of William and Mary, 2018
Interests: Everyone starts as a single cell and slowly becomes a complex organism with many functions and specialized tissues. How does that one cell start off this whole process? How does a cell control those first fateful decisions as it divides? I hope to explore the mechanisms by which cells sense their place, size, and position as a way to understand those first steps of development.
Grace Carey
Position : PhD Student
grace.i.carey.gr@dartmouth.edu
Education: B.A. Hamilton College, 2021
Interests: Genetics, cell biology, and bioinformatics. How do cells in a developing organism sense their changing size to regulate the timing of key developmental milestones? What factors regulate the initiation of zygotic transcription in developing embryos?
Hiep Nguyen
Position : Technician
hiep.h.nguyen@dartmouth.edu
Education: B.S. Case Western Reserve University, 2024
Interests: Biochemistry and cell biology. How do cells know when to grow or divide? What genes, proteins or pathways that mediate these processes? I am interested in studying the biochemical mechanisms that control cell size and division.
Allison Wall
Position : Undergraduate
allison.l.wall.26@dartmouth.edu
Education: Dartmouth Class of 2026
Interests: I am interested in the early rapid cell cycles of the Drosophila embryo, and the mechanisms behind its transition to patterned and regulated divisions. Specifically, I want to learn more about the role that histones play in this pathway, and how that can be used to better understand cell cycle regulation.
Aurora Wackford
Position : Undergraduate
aurora.b.wackford.26@dartmouth.edu
Education: Dartmouth Class of 2026
Interests: I’m interested in the processes of development and untangling the exciting ways in which cells know how and when to synthesize, divide and cellularize. I’m mostly interested in the genetic side, and am currently working on how histone chaperones affect import and incorporation of histones.
Aditi Gupta
Position : Undergraduate
aditi.gupta.27@dartmouth.edu
Education: Dartmouth Class of 2027
Interests: I hope to fully understand the mechanisms behind the transition from rapid nuclear divisions to cellularization present in the early cell cycle of the developing Drosophila embryo. Further, I am interested in learning about the role of histones as cell cycle regulators at different stages throughout the Drosophila life cycle.
Lab Alumni:
Yuki Shindo (Post Doc 2016-2024)- Currently an Assistant Professor at UT Dallas
Kiera Schwarz (Technician 2022-2024)- Currently a PhD student at Dartmouth MCB
Maddie Brown (Dartmouth Class of 2022/2024)- Currently a PhD student at Cornell
Cameron Moore (Dartmouth Class of 2025)
Tim Liu (Dartmouth Class of 2024)
Henry Wilky (Technician 2015-2020) – went on to the Department of Justice
Sudarshan Chari (Postdoc 2017-2019) – currently Associate Director Computational Biology-Translational Omics at Glaxo Smith Kline
Jayalakshmi Govindan (Research Specialist 2015-2017) – currently Program Manager at Bristol Myers Squibb
Katherine Angier (Princeton Class of 2018) – went on to High Meadows Fellowship; currently PhD student at Harvard University
Eve Reilly (Technician 2015) – went on to PhD at Rutgers University; currently the Director of US Oncology Marketing at Merck
Jack Mazzulo (Princeton Class of 2016) – went on to medical school at Oregon Health and Science University
Anagha Prasanna (Summer 2016) – Princeton class of 2019, went on to medical school
Erica Avery (Summer 2015) – went on to a PhD at Johns Hopkins