Members

Current Members

Peng Mao, PhD

Associate Professor

Dr. Mao obtained his Ph.D. degree from Peking University in China. He received his post-doctoral training with Dr. Michael (Mick) Smerdon at Washington State University (WSU). Afterwards, he worked with Dr. John Wyrick at WSU as an Assistant and Associate Research Professor and continues his close collaboration with Dr. Wyrick. He started his independent career at the University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center in 2019, and established a successful DNA repair group in Albuquerque. In 2024, he moved to New York to start a new journey at Stony Brook University. Dr. Mao likes sports, particularly soccer and college football.

Mingrui Duan, PhD

Research Assistant Professor

Dr. Duan received Ph.D. from Peking University in China. She was initially trained as a biochemist in graduate school and has successfully extended her skills to genomics and bioinformatics. She is interested in understanding the mechanism by which enhanced DNA repair capacity in cancer cells leads to drug resistance in chemotherapy. Dr. Duan likes playing piano.

Kehan Yi

Graduate student

Kehan is a PhD student in the Molecular and Cellular Biology program at Stony Brook University. She obtained her B.S. in Biomedical Sciences from Zhejiang University and University of Edinburgh (dual degree) in 2023. While at Zhejiang University, she studied the role of stress granules in the pathology of neurodegenerative diseases in Dr. Ge Bai’s lab as an undergraduate researcher. In 2024, Kehan joined Dr. Shawn Liu's lab at Columbia University Medical Center as a research assistant to investigate the precise editing of epigenome using CRISPR technology. Kehan joined Dr. Mao’s lab in 2026, and her current research focuses on elucidating the genome-wide TC-NER regulation by different TC-NER factors using NGS and molecular biology methods. In her spare time, Kehan enjoys singing and reading.

Shreeya Gillela

Undergraduate student

Shreeya is a freshman undergraduate student majoring in Biochemistry on the pre-med track. In the Mao Lab, she focuses on the BER DNA repair mechanism in yeast. Outside of academics, she enjoys Formula 1, listening to music, traveling, working out, and reading.

Lucas Ma

Undergraduate student

Lucas is a freshman undergraduate student at the Honors College for Stony Brook University majoring in Biochemistry. Previously, Lucas conducted research at the NYU Department of Radiology studying glaucoma and low-grade glioma. In the Mao Lab, Lucas is currently focusing on TCR/NER repair mechanisms in glioma cells. Lucas likes playing volleyball, basketball, and watching the NBA.

Andrew Lin

Undergraduate student

Andrew is an undergraduate student majoring in Interdisciplinary Biology on the pre-med track at Stony Brook University. His work in Mao Lab examines if mutations associated with melanoma are also present in healthy melanocytes, helping to understand the relationship between UV-induced mutations and melanoma-specific mutations. Outside of academics and research, he enjoys working out and playing sports like volleyball and badminton.

Alumni

Ayman Khalifa

Ayman worked with us from July 2025 to Aug 2026 as a postdocral fellow. He helped the lab purify CPD photolyase enzyme at high quality. He also participated in CRISPR KO and screening experiments. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Nephrology and Hypertension in the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony BrookUniversity.

Allyson Hoag

Ally joined us as our first gradaute student at UNM in 2022. She worked on a XPD project to characterize DNA repair defects underlying two different clinical phenotypes, cancer-prone XP and cancer plus neurodegeneration XP/CS. Ally successfully defended Ph.D thesis in June 2026 and she is now a postdoctoral scientist at UNM Health Science Center.

Bastian Stark

Dr. Stark worked with us from Jan 2025 to July 2026 as a Postdoctoral Fellow. He worked on a project to investigate UV damage bias for human nucleotide excision repair and its impact on mutation distribution in skin cancers. He is currently a Research Scientist in iCell Gene Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company headquatered in Stony Brook.

Qin Liu

Ms. Liu worked in the Mao lab from 2024 to 2025 as a Research Support Specialist. She played a key role in setting up the lab and participated in several CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing projects. It has been a great pleasure to have Qin in the lab.

Po-Hsuen Lee

Dr. Lee worked in the Mao lab from 2022 to 2024 as an Associate Scientist. He helped the lab establish CUT&RUN assay and contributed to several projects. Dr. Lee was unable to relocate to NY with the lab due to family reasons, but we deeply miss him and appreciate his hard work!

Jenna Ulibarri

Jenna worked in the Mao lab from 2019 to 2022 as a Research Technician and is one of the founding lab members. Although Jenna did not have reserach experience when first joined the lab, she showed us her incredible talent to learn new techniques including PCR, cell culture, DNA isolation, protein extraction and detection, yeast mutant generation, CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, and so on. She participated in many projects in the lab and co-authored three papers. She is currently a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis.

Tanisha Medha

Tanisha joined the Mao lab in her freshman year at UNM. She is from Canada and is a delightful person to work with. She mainly worked on bioinformatics to analyze transcription factor binding sites.

Jasmine Meltzer

Jasmine is an undergraduate student at Clemson University in South Carolina. She worked in the lab in 2021 through UNM Undergraduate Pipeline Network (UPN), a program which allows students to explore their interests in research and health sciences. Jasmine did an amazing work during the 8-week summer program by studying CAN1 mutation frequency in yeast cells upon exposure to MNNG. Her data served as the foundation for the whole-genome mutation sequencing experiment we subsequently conducted in the lab.

Deanna Garcia

Deanna worked as a UPN student in 2022. She is currently an undergraduate student at New Mexico Tech.

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