Current Lab Members

Sara Paiva, MD, MsC, PhD

My name is Sara Paiva and I am a Visiting Scholar at Dr. de Assis' Lab. I was born and raised in Brazil, where I received my Medical Degree at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and got certified as an Obstetrics and Gynecologist physician from the Brazilian Federation of ObGyn (FEBRASGO). I received my Master and Doctoral Degrees in Physiology and Biochemistry at Georgetown University (GU), where I met Dr. de Assis.  As an ObGyn Professor at the UFMG School of Medicine and University Hospital, I have been conducting studies with Mindfulness-Based Interventions to help patients, medical students, and health professionals to cope with stress. As a Consultant at the Pan-American Health Organization and Pan-American Centre of Perinatology (PAHO/CLAP), I have designed a Trainers’ Workshop to create competencies for better care during pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum period, aimed at professionals at the three levels of care. Working with epigenetic inheritance will be very beneficial for my career as a researcher. I believe that my expertise in placenta biology will be beneficial to the de Assis’s Lab,  since placenta likely plays a role as a temporary organ as a mediator of epigenetic inheritance. This work will serve as basis for an important partnership between UFMG and GU and hopefully will move us towards greater excellence in our respective research endeavors.

Meghali Joshi, PhD

My name is Meghali Joshi, I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in Dr. de Assis Lab, Georgetown-Lombardi Cancer Comprehensive Center, Washington, DC. I did my doctoral research under the guidance of Dr. Rajender Singh, CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute, India where I explored the role of small non-coding RNAs in spermatogenesis and male infertility and identified miRNA biomarkers of sperm quality and infertility. Working on sperm small non-coding RNAs for over 6 years sparked my curiosity to explore their role in epigenetic inheritance. Recently, several studies have reported the intergenerational and transgenerational effects of environmental conditions, emphasizing on how these external signals are perceived and communicated to the subsequent generations. To answer this question, we in Dr. de Assis Lab are working on to show how small non-coding RNAs are involved in carrying the environmental signals from soma to germline and to the next generations. 

Duane Pereria, PhD

My name is Duane, I am currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at Dr. de Assis Lab, Georgetown University – Lombardi Cancer Comprehensive Center. I was born and raised in Brazil, where I receive my master’s and PhD degrees in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Federal University of São João Del Rei (UFSJ). I developed research evaluating the in vitro antitumor effect of the synergistic treatment between digoxin and cisplatin and its effects on cell signaling and oxidative stress in cervical cancer. I moved to the U.S. in 2021, where during 2 year I did my first postdoctoral at Marshall University, working with animal models of kidney injury and sepsis, analyzing the involvement of Na/K-ATPase signaling in exacerbating oxidative stress and inflammatory process, and also studying miRNAs as biomarkers for predisposition to chronic diseases. The study of cancer has always been a fascinating subject for me, especially when it comes to studying the effects of lifestyle on cancer predisposition and its transmission between generations. In Dr. de Assis' lab, my focus is on understanding the role of male epigenetic inheritance in cancer predisposition and the role of sperm RNAs in placental development.I am excited to be part of the Dr. de Assis lab and the Georgetown research community and I look forward to further improving my knowledge and being able to actively contribute to the field of cancer epigenetics through my work.

Giulia Weddle, BS

My name is Giulia Weddle, and I am a master's student at Georgetown University. I am from Frederick, Maryland and received my undergraduate degrees at the University of Maryland (UMD) in Physiology & Neurobiology and Spanish. My future goal is to become a pediatric oncologist and hematologist, as I was diagnosed with multiple tumors as a child. The field of epigfenetics in research is fairly new to me, but it's such an interesting subject, so I'm excited to learn more about these mechanisms in Dr. de Assis's lab. In my previous lab at UMD I researched the contribution of the delta pgi gene of E. coli in the glycolysis cycle and I worked as a microbiology teaching assistant for two years. I'm very passionate about research and its ability to help further our knowledge in the scientific field and I look forward to joining this amazing lab

Lili Rodgers

I am an undergraduate student at Georgetown University originally from Brookline, Massachusetts. I am studying the Biology of Global Health, and I hope to make it my life’s work to reduce health inequity and fight for health as a human right. Cancer is a topic that is both intellectually fascinating and personally important to me, and I am especially interested in inequities that contribute to cancer. Epigenetics and the impact of the environment on wellbeing are key parts of understanding health, so I am excited to explore the intersection of all my interests in the de Assis Lab. In my free time, I enjoy spending time with family and friends, reading books by the late Dr. Paul Farmer, and going on runs to the DC monuments. 

Lu Jin, MS

I joined the CCSB at Georgetown University in 2010 after graduating from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University with a Master degree in Electrical Computer Engineering. In my graduate study, the major problem we were trying to solve is optimizing the time complexity and space complexity of the high throughput data analysis and develop machine learning algorithms to make sense of the data. My recent work focused on omics data integration. Benefiting from the U54 project, we were able to obtain all kinds of omics data from the same sample, which include methylation, mRNA microarray, metabolomics and RNAseq data. Based on my previous experience and related literature, by applying the cloud computing technic and using a handy statistical software “R”, I created a set of workflows in Linux server that suitable for the analysis of different kinds of omics data. Then, in order to link all the numbers to a meaningful biological finding, knowledge based and mathematical model based integration were both implemented. 

Denise Harley