Craig Smail, PhD

Craig is a Group Leader at the Genomic Medicine Center, Children's Mercy Hospital and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Missouri - Kansas City (UMKC) School of Medicine, with a secondary appointment at Kansas University School of Medicine. Craig completed a BA/MA degree at the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in Biomedical Informatics at Stanford University in the lab of Dr. Stephen Montgomery. 

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Marissa Keever-Keigher, PhD

Marissa is a Bioinformatics Scientist in the lab. She received her Bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Integrative Biology. She also completed her Master’s and PhD at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Animal Sciences with a focus in bioinformatics and genomics. She is interested in the application of systems biology approaches to gain insight into the effects of non-coding variants on the transcriptome, as well as rare diseases with digenic and polygenic origins.

Cas LeMaster, MS

Cas is a Bioinformatics Scientist in the lab. He received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas in Neurobiology. He also completed his Master’s at the University of Maryland with a focus in Bioinformatics. He is interested in rare variant associations, single-cell transcriptomics and multiomics.

Savy Nistala

Savy is a medical student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City with a passion for computational genomics and the genetics of rare diseases. She is especially interested in using bioinformatics and machine learning approaches to explore large-scale genomic data, with the goal of identifying new biomarkers and improving approaches to precision medicine. By combining medical training with computational research, Savy hopes to bridge the gap between clinical care and genomic discovery, helping to bring meaningful advances in diagnosis and treatment to patients with complex genetic diseases.