Post Doctoral Researchers
Dr. Margaret Pruitt
Maggie joined the Manning lab in November 2016 and left in 2019 for a position with Biotek Instruments
Graduate Students
Dr. Conor Herlihy
Conor joined the lab in 2015 and graduated in 2020. He is now completing his postdoc in Dr. Ting Wu’s lab at Harvard
Robert Belmonte
Robert was an MS candidate in Biotechnology who joined the lab in 2021 and graduated in 2022.
Weikang Fu
Weikang was an MS candidate in Biotechnology who graduated in 2023
Dr. Sabine Hahn
Sabine Hahn joined the lab in 2018 and graduated in 2023. She is now a postdoc fellow with Dr. Ramirez Ortiz at UMass Chan Medical School
Dr. Dayna Mercadante
Dayna joined the lab in 2017 and was co-mentored by Sarah Olson in the math Department. She graduated from the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Program in 2022, completed an Eagleton Science and Politics Fellowship at the New Jersey Senate Democratic Office, and is now at Dana Faber Cancer Institute
Dr. Luis Gregory Gutierrez Zamalloa
Greg joined the lab in 2018 and graduated in 2023. He is now a postdoc fellow in Dr. Arguello’s group at WPI
MQP students
During their senior year, WPI students complete a major qualifying project (MQP). Students who complete their MQP with us spend a year working on independent or small group research projects that complement or build off of ongoing projects in the lab.
2017:
Eva Childers, BBT
“Determining the Role and Implications of Aurora A Kinase Inhibition in Acute Myeloid Leukemia”
Navarro-Serer, Childers, et al., 2019
Eva is now pursuing her graduate degree in the Molecular and Cellular biology PhD program at Dartmouth College
Lindsay Gurska, BBT
“Regulation of Mitotic DNA Damage by the Retinoblastoma Tumor Suppressor Protein”
* Provost’s MQP Award
Lindsay is now pursuing her graduate degree in the Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Biomedical Sciences Program.
Bernat Navarro-Serer, BBT/CBC
“Centrosome Amplification Promotes Resistance to Alisertib”
Navarro-Serer, Childers et al., 2019
Bernat is now pursuing his graduate degree in the PhD program at John Hopkins University
2019
Jacqueline Garcia, BBT
“Mutations in Kinesin 5A effect in Mitochondrial Mobility in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia” co-mentored with Claudia Fallini, UMMS
*Provost’s MQP Award Honorable Mention
Jacqueline is currently pursuing her PhD at Tufts University
Hammad Sadiq, BBT
“Transcriptional Regulation of Non-Coding RNAs by the Retinoblastoma Tumor Suppressor Protein”
* Provost’s MQP Award
Hammad is currently working as a clinical research assistant at UMMS.
2020
Michael Corace, BCB and Alyssa Nicolella, BCB
“Tracking DNA Damage Repair in Cancerous Cells” co-mentored by Dmitry Korkin, CS
* Provost’s MQP Award Honorable Mention
Michael is currently pursuing his MS at WPI.
Alyssa is working as an Associate Computational Biologist at MIT’s Broad Institute.
Brooke Honzel, BBT
“Investigating the Role of MycN and p53 Binding in Pediatric Neuroblastoma” co-mentored with Jason Shohet, UMMS
Brooke is currently working as a clinical research coordinator at Brigham and Women’s hospital
Daniel McDonough, BCB/CS and Surya Vadivazhagu, CS
“Predicting DNA Damage in Fluorescent Imaging” co-mentored by Dmitry Korkin, CS
Surya is currently working as a Data Scientist at Intel Corporation
Thomas Perry, Biology and Biotechnology
“pRB dependent regulation of Cell Motility”
Emily Stadnicki, Chemistry and Biochemistry
“Defining Cell Cycle-Specific Interactions of the pRB Tumor Suppressor”
Emily is now pursuing her graduate degree in the PhD program at Brandeis University
2021
Sarah Brown, Biology and Biotechnology
“Investigating the Role of SUV4-20 Inhibition in Mitosis”
* Provost’s MQP Award 2nd Place
Jagruthi Maroju, Biology and Biotechnology
2022
Kylie Belanger, Biology and Biotechnology
“Investigating the role of cortical dynein in mitotic progression”
*Provost’s MQP award
Cristian Nunez, Biology and Biotechnology and Professional Writing
“Molecular Characterization of the Histone Methyltransferase Suv420”
2023
Hannah Shell, Biology and Biotechnology
“Regulation of genome stability during mitosis”
Mikhail Rashkovskii, Chemistry and Biochemistry
“Defining cell cycle dependent RB interactors”
Undergraduate Student Researchers
Ben Cossette
Biomedical Engineering, Graduating Class of 2017
Ben is currently pursuing his PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Duke University
Jonas Ettlin
Jonas was an undergraduate from the ZHAW Institute for Biotechnology in Switzerland who joined the Manning lab in the summer of 2015 to perform his research thesis project. Jonas successfully defended his thesis, Exploiting defects in chromatin structure to enhance DNA damage in osteosarcoma cells, in November 2015 and won an award as top student in his Bachelor’s program.
Salvador Lombardo
BS/MS Management Engineering, Graduating Class of 2021
Aishwarrya Arivudainambi
Aishwarrya was a Mass Academy Student who joined our research group the summer before her senior year (2015) as one of the first long-term student researcher in the Manning lab. She is now pursuing her undergraduate career at Brown University.