PEOPLE
Current lab members
Ziyue Gao
Principal investigator
Ziyue grew up in Beijing, China. She received her bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from Tsinghua University. She then did her Ph.D study in genetics at the University of Chicago, working with Dr. Molly Przeworski, and completed postdoc training in Jonathan Pritchard's group at Stanford. Besides doing research, her dream jobs are detective and science fiction writer. In 2020, Ziyue took on two new roles: PI of her own lab and mom of a lovely little girl.
Diljeet Kaur, PhD student co-mentored by Wanding Zhou
Diljeet is a student in the Cellular & Molecular Biology Graduate Group, under the Genetics and Epigenetics track. Originally from New Jersey, Diljeet completed her Bachelor’s Degree in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Rutgers University in 2020. During her undergraduate research, she utilized molecular biology techniques to study transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in C. elegans, as well as the functions of facultative heterochromatin in S. pombe. Diljeet is very excited to join the Gao lab as a rotation student and to learn more about population and computational biology! In her free time, she enjoys hiking, running, and reading.
Sheel presenting her poster at TAGC 2024
Sheel Chandra, PhD student (Biology)
Sheel grew up in New Delhi, India and received her Bachelor’s degree in Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley. She did undergraduate research and senior thesis in Nicole King’s lab, where she investigated choanoflagellate diversity and cellular responses to stress. She then worked as a Research Assistant in Peter Andolfatto’s lab at Columbia University, working on constructing recombination landscapes of Drosophila species. She joined the lab in 2023 summer and works on the impact of epigenetic modifications on the mutation landscape within human genome and across species.
In her free time, Sheel enjoys reading, cooking, and watching the Sixers.
We are recruiting!
We are currently looking for curious and passionate researchers to join our group! See here for more information about what you can expect in the lab.
Alumni
Zihan (Cheryl) Yu
Zihan worked on GC-based gene conversion in the lab 2020-2022, when she was a master's student of Biotechnology at Penn. She is currently working at Clarivate Consulting.
Gefei Zhu
Gefei is an undergrad at Penn majoring in computational biology/computer science. In 2022, he did summer research in the lab working on characterizing the evolution of mutation spectrum in human populations.
Fabian Ramos-Almodovar, rotation student (GCB)
Fabian is a PhD student in GCB graduate program. He did a rotation in the lab in 2023, working on evolution of the human mutation rates and generation times.
Georgia Mies, rotation student (GCB)
Georgia started her graduate study at Penn in 2022 and rotated in the lab in spring 2023. Her rotation project focuses on repurposing selection scans to detect mutation modifiers in the human genome.
Annon Timon, rotation student (GCB)
Annan is graduate student in GCB program. He graduated with a degree in Molecular Biology from Princeton in 2019 and then completed a post-baccalaureate fellowship under Sridhar Hannenhalli at the NCI. During his rotation in the lab in spring 2023, he studied mutation rates in cancer driver genes in different contexts.