People

Principal Investigator

Seth A. Ament, PhD. Dr. Ament is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM). The Ament lab is located within the Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS), and Dr. Ament is also primary faculty of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, the University of Maryland -- Medicine Institute for Neuroscience Discovery, and the Kahlert Institute for Addiction Medicine. Dr. Ament established his independent research program at UMSOM in 2016. Prior to that, he completed postdoctoral training in systems and computational biology with Leroy Hood and Nathan Price at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington. Dr. Ament earned his PhD in Neuroscience working with Gene Robinson at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, where he studied the molecular mechanisms of honey bee social behavior.

Research Faculty and Staff Scientists

Carlo Colantuoni, PhD. Dr. Colantuoni is a Research Associate with faculty appointments at IGS and in the Department of Neurology. He develops computational methods and multi-omic data resources to investigate human stem cell variation, cortical development, immune responses, and shared mechanisms across neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative brain disorders. Prior to joining the UMSOM faculty in 2026, Dr. Colantuoni held faculty appointments at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development. Carlo earned his A.B. from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Evelina Mocci, PhD. Dr. Mocci is a Research Associate with faculty appointments at IGS and in the Department of Medicine. A genetic epidemiologist and bioinformatician, she uses genetic, genomic, and clinical data to identify risk factors and molecular pathways underlying complex human traits and diseases. She applies machine learning approaches to develop predictive models for precision medicine. Her recent work focuses on pain susceptibility, neurological and psychiatric conditions, and treatment-related symptoms, building on broader expertise in cancer and population genetics. 

Marcia Cortes-Gutierrez, MS. Ms. Cortes is the Ament Lab’s research manager and oversees its day-to-day wet lab operations. She has implemented numerous laboratory protocols and trains researchers in iPSC culture techniques and sample processing for single-cell and spatial multi-omics. Her current projects include the development of technologies for scalable, multimodal genetic screens in iPSC-derived neurons, as well as genomic and proteomic characterization of synapses in human brain tissue.

Postdoctoral Fellows

Sterling Arjona, PhD. Dr. Arjona's postdoctoral research aims to understand how genetic variants in chromatin-remodeling genes influence risk for psychiatric disorders. Specifically, she is utilizing an iPSC model to characterize how rare variants in a schizophrenia risk gene, SETD1A, influence the organization of protein complexes on chromatin DNA, their dynamics across neurodevelopment, and how changes in these chromatin modifications impact neuronal structure and function. Sterling has been supported by postdoctoral fellowships from the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund and from the T32 in Translational Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center.

America Chandia-Cristi, PhD. Dr. Chandia-Cristi's postdoctoral research focuses on the roles of the cerebellum in autism, schizophrenia, and related disorders. She is developing cerebellar organoid models to understand how genetic and immunological risk factors for these disorders influence the maturation of the cerebellum's principal neuronal subtypes: Purkinje and granule cells. She is also contributing to parallel studies of in vivo cerebellar maturation and its alterations in neurodevelopmental disorders, through spatial multi-omic profiling of human post-mortem brain tissue.

Mariya Prokhorenko, PhD. Dr. Prokhorenko utilizes systems and computational biology approaches to characterize molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying brain disorders. Her current projects aim to identify molecular mechanisms and therapeutic targets for substance use disorders (SUD) using single-cell and spatial multi-omic data from multiple brain regions in hundreds of human donors with SUD, as well as rodent and primate models for aspects of addiction. Previous studies in the Ament lab investigated mechanisms investigated mechanisms underlying traumatic brain injury and chronic pain.

Graduate Students and Research Fellows

Benjamin Grissom. Ben is a PhD Candidate in Molecular Medicine. His dissertation project utilizes single-cell and spatial multi-omic data to investigate molecular mechanisms underlying the long-lasting effects of opioid drugs in a rat model of heroin abstinence.

Aditi Biswas. Aditi is a PhD Candidate in Molecular Medicine. As part of her dissertation research, she has implemented several spatial transcriptomic and proteomic technologies to characterize human and mouse brain tissue. She is applying these approaches to understand malformations of cortical development in a mouse model of focal cortical dysplasia, as well as the postnatal maturation of synapses and neural circuits in the human cerebellum.

Sonia Malaiya. Sonia is a PhD Candidate in Neuroscience. Her dissertation research aims to characterize the diversity of immune cells in the human nervous system in multiple contexts, including atlases of microglial diversity across the human lifespan, as well as of peripheral immune cells infiltrating the cerebral spinal fluid after non-traumatic brain injuries.

Bareera Qamar. Bareera is a PhD Candidate in Molecular Medicine. Her dissertation research uses multidisciplinary approaches to characterize molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome. Clinical studies aim to identify genomic biomarkers in saliva that predict withdrawal severity and treatment outcomes in infants exposed to opioids during pregnancy. Mechanistic studies in iPSC and rodent models aim to understand the effects of opioids on brain development.

Rowan O'Hara-Payne. Rowan is a PhD Candidate in Epidemiology and Human Genetics. Her dissertation research focuses on genetic and immune mechanisms in schizophrenia and related disorders, including single-cell genomic characterization of activated T-cells in an inflammatory sub-group and exome sequencing studies to investigate rare variants that influence symptoms and endophentoypes in multiply-affected Amish families with mental illnesses.

Yugantar Gera. Yugantar is a PhD Candidate in Neuroscience. His dissertation research utilizes iPSC models to characterize multi-scale mechanisms linking genetic, transcriptomic, morphological, and functional variation in human neurons, with a particular focus on voltage-gated calcium channel mutations that cause Timothy syndrome.

Yumna Ahmed. Yumna is a PhD Candidate in Molecular Medicine. Her dissertation research takes a multidisciplinary approach to characterize rare variants that influence risk for mood disorders. She performs genetic association studies to identify protein-coding variants associated with psychiatric symptoms and diagnoses in Old Order Amish families, as well as their associations with brain imaging and cognitive endophenotypes. She uses patient-derived iPSCs to characterize the effects of these variants on neuronal development and function.

Bharath Kumar Swargum. Bharath is a Research Fellow with a master's deigree in Data Science from UMBC. Bharath applies machine learning and AI techniques to predict biomedical phenotypes. His current work uses transformer models to predict the consequences of genetic perturbations in human brain development, starting from Perturb-seq data in organoids. In a previous project, Bharath developed a genetic prediction model to identify surgical patients at risk of high opioid consumption.

Lab Alumni

Robert Lease (PhD in Molecular Medicine, 2026). Now a bioinformatics analyst at IGS/UMSOM.

Erin Wildermuth (MD/PhD in Molecular Medicine, 2026). Now completing her medical residency in Psychiatry at UNC Chapel Hill.

Brian Herb, PhD (Bioinformatics Software Engineer / Research Associate, 2018-2025). Now an Assistant Professor at UMSOM Institute for Genome Sciences and Department of Pharmacology and Physiology.

Anjana Santosh-Kumar (MS in Human Genetics, 2024). 

Jayme Choe (MS in Cellular and Molecular Bioscience, 2022). Now pursuing a PhD in Clinical Psychology.

Parth Bhatia (MS in Human Genetics, 2021). Next position: Research Assistant at Harvard Medical School. Now a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Doctoral Student at the University of Birmingham.

Alex Casella (MD/PhD in Molecular Medicine, 2023). Now completing her medical residency in Neurology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Samaneh Ali (Undergraduate Intern / Research Assistant, 2020-2023). Now in medical school at UMSOM.

Gurmannat Kalra (PhD in Molecular Medicine, 2021). Now a computational biology at Glaxo Smith Kline.

Elizabeth Humphries (PhD in Molecular Epidemiology, 2021). Now a staff scientist at Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center.

Rediet Oshone, PhD (Postdoctoral Fellow, 2017-2021). Now a genome-editing and ML/AI scientist in industry.

Naushaba Hasin, PhD (Postdoctoral Fellow, 2017-2020). Now a Scientist at Millipore/Sigma

Wissam Saleh (MS in Human Genetics, 2020). Now a molecular genetics technologist and researcher in Jerusalem.