Ron Do
Ron Do is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Human Genetics Research, MGH and Broad Institute. He completed his M.Sc. in Epidemiology at the University of British Columbia and Ph.D in Human Genetics at McGill University. During his Ph.D., he studied the effects of genetic variants on lipids and cardiovascular disease using a variety of approaches including fine-mapping, gene-environment interaction and meta-analysis methods in gene association studies. He is currently investigating the role of low frequency variants and rare mutations in whole exome resequencing datasets of families with extreme lipid disorders and population-based samples with early onset myocardial infarction.
Chi Gao
Chi Gao is a research technician at the Center for Human Genetics Research, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Chi received her B.A. in Biochemistry and Statistics with cum laude honor from Smith College. Her current research focuses on the molecular mechanisms underlying cardiovascular disease. She is also interested in identifying the role of genetic variants in plasma lipids and cardiovascular disease using statistical analysis tools.
Lindsey Hildebrand
Lindsey Hildebrand is the clinical research coordinator working on a study of the genetic basis for extreme HDL cholesterol levels. She completed her B.A. in psychology at Wellesley College along with pre-medical coursework. In the future, she hopes to pursue a career in medicine.
Vered Levy
Dr. Vered Levy is a research scientist at the Center for Human Genetic Research at Massachusetts General Hospital. She received her Ph.D. from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel in Cellular and Developmental Biology. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where she studied epidermal stem cells. Following her postdoctoral training Dr. Levy managed Molecular Cytomics Inc. US Research and Development Section in collaboration with Boston University. Her research now focuses on the mechanisms involved in cardiovascular diseases.
Pradeep Natarajan
Pradeep Natarajan is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Human Genetic Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He is investigating the genomics of sub-clinical atherosclerotic phenotypes. After completing his M.D. at the University of California, San Francisco, he completed internship and residency in Internal Medicine at the Brigham & Women's Hospital. Currently, he is a clinical and research fellow in Cardiovascular Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
Aniruddh Patel
Aniruddh Patel is a Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Fellow at the Center for Human Genetics Research, MGH. He received a B.A. in Anthropology and Biochemistry summa cum laude from Washington University and is currently a medical student at the Yale University School of Medicine. He is currently investigating targeted sequencing projects looking for genes implicated in high and low lipid levels.
Gina Peloso
Gina Peloso is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Human Genetics Research, MGH. She completed her Ph.D in Biostatistics at Boston University. Her dissertation was on population structure in genetic association studies and the use of family data. While pursuing her Ph.D she was a research assistant working on statistical analysis with the Framingham Heart Study. She is currently working on targeted and exome sequencing projects with high/low lipid trait samples.
Heiko Runz
Heiko Runz is a board-certified medical geneticist. Following his Postdoc in cell biology/biophysics at the European Molecular Biological Laboratories (EMBL), he was appointed group leader at the Institute of Human Genetics Heidelberg and the Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit (MMPU), a joint initiative of Heidelberg university clinics and EMBL. The focus of his research is on the functional characterization of novel genes and genetic elements associated with blood lipid levels and cardiovascular disease. His visit to the lab is supported by a Fondation Leducq Career Development Award.
Suthesh Sivapalaratnam
Suthesh Sivapalaratnam is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Human Genetic Research. He qualified as a M.D. at the University of Amsterdam in 2008. After which he obtained his PhD degree on the Molecular Basis of Early Onset Cardiovascular disease at the University of Amsterdam. This project was done in close collaboration with the University of Cambridge and the Sanger Institute in the UK. He has a special interest in families with multiple cases of severe early onset CVD without any known risk factors.
Nate Stitziel
Nathan Stitziel is a postdoctoral fellow working on the genomics of early-onset myocardial infarction along with other cardiovascular traits. After obtaining his MD and PhD (Bioinformatics) from the University of Illinois, he completed an internship and residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago. He is currently a clinical cardiology fellow at the Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Hayato Tada
Hayato Tada is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Human Genetic Research, MGH. He is a clinical cardiologist (M.D.) and completed his Ph.D. from Kanazawa University in clinical lipidology. His research focus is to detect the causative loci using whole exome sequencing for the families with extreme lipid profiles. He will also be involved in the research of miRNA, in relation to cardiovascular disease.
Hong-Hee Won
Hong-Hee Won is a Research Fellow at the Center for Human Genetics Research, Massachusetts General Hospital. After receiving his B.S. and M.S. in computer science and bioinformatics at Yonsei University, he worked in Samsung Biomedical Research Institute, Samsung Medical Center. Here, he was involved in genome-wide linkage and association studies to identify the disease susceptibility or pharmacogenetic markers for diverse diseases. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in bioinformatics and genomics at KAIST, where he studied the prediction of damaging effects of missense variants using an ensemble approach with a disease gene network. He is interested in investigating genetic markers associated with various traits using high-throughput genomic data and bioinformatic methods.
Yu-Xin Xu
Dr. Yuxin Xu is a research scientist at the Cardiovascular Research Center, Center for Human Genetic Research, affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He received his bachelor of medicine from Anhui Medical University, China, and Ph.D. from Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. He obtained his postdoctoral training in Columbia University, New York, where he studied the regulation of gene expression via transcription and pre-mRNA processing, as well as the mechanism of mitotic chromosome condensation in mammals. Following his postdoc he was employed as research assistant professor at the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Boston University Medical Campus, where he studied the metabolic regulation of mammalian glycosylation and the regulation of perlecan in the lipid binding and its implications in atherosclerosis. His current research is focusing on the molecular mechanism of the newly identified genetic factors in the lipoprotein metabolism and their significance in the cardiovascular diseases.