Upcoming Dissertation Defense Seminars

Zoe Levine
Monday, June 23, 2025 at 2:00 p.m.
Title: Genomic surveillance and deployable molecular diagnostics for emerging infectious diseases
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Advisor: Pardis C. Sabeti, M.D., D.Phil.

Recent Dissertation Defense Seminars

Rachel Hecht 
Tuesday, June 10th, 2025
Title: Structure-guided Neuraminidase Immunogen Design for Next-generation Influenza Vaccines
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Biophysics Advisor: Aaron Schmidt, Ph.D.

Tarun Kamath 
Monday, June 9, 2025
Title: Internal State Modulation of Striatal Dopamine Signaling
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Neuroscience
Advisor: Bernardo Sabatini, M.D., Ph.D.

Maya Talukdar
Wednesday, June 4, 2025
Title: Convergent and sex-differential genetic underpinnings of autism
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – BMI-Bioinformatics & Integrative Genomics
Advisors: Christopher Walsh, M.D., Ph.D. & David Page, M.D.

Katherine Aney
Monday, May 5, 2025
Title: Exocrine pancreas cell plasticity in injury, regeneration, and precancerous initiation 
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Advisor: Sahar Nissim, M.D., Ph.D.

Yuxiao (Michelle) Wei
Monday, May 5, 2025
Title: Chemical microscopy and image analysis for biomedical applications
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Advisor: Conor Evans, Ph.D.

Silvia Huerta Lopez
Friday, May 2, 2025
Title: The Neural Basis of a Thirst-dependent Odor Spotlight 
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Advisor: Stephen Liberles, Ph.D.

Sayo Eweje
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Title: Self-Assembling Protein Nanoparticles for Cytosolic Delivery of Therapeutic Macromolecules
MD-PhD Candidate in MIT HST-MEMP
Advisor: Elliot Chaikof, M.D., Ph.D.

Christina Zeina
Friday, April 11, 2025
Title: Synthesis of ubiquitin chains at the proteasome
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS - Chemical Biology
Advisor: Daniel Finley, Ph.D.

Isobel Green
Friday, April 4, 2025
Title: Dual dopaminergic pathways for avoidance behavior under reward-threat conflict
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – NeuroscienceAdvisor: Naoshige Uchida, Ph.D.

David R. Mazumder
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Title: Attenuation of the Post-Movement Beta Rebound in Patients with Epilepsy
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Neuroscience
Advisor: Alexander Rotenberg, M.D., Ph.D.

Blake Smith
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Title: Activation-dependent lentiviruses promote selective expansion and transduction of antigen-specific T cells
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – ImmunologyAdvisors: Stephanie Dougan, Ph.D. and Michael Birnbaum, Ph.D.

John Drago
Friday, March 14, 2025
Title: Mitigating Inhomogeneity in High-Field MRI Excitations: Multiphoton Parallel Transmission and Arbitrary Waveform Optimization
MD-PhD Candidate in MIT - Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Advisor: Lawrence L. Wald, Ph.D.

Angela Zou
Thursday, March 13, 2025
Title: Mechanisms governing inflammatory and invasive fibroblast pathology
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Immunology
Advisor: Michael B. Brenner, M.D.

Kathryn Evans
Friday, March 7, 2025
Title: Distributed encoding of natural and drug-induced physiological states in the insular cortex
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Neuroscience
Advisor: Mark Andermann, Ph.D.

Andy Binkercosen
Wednesday, March 12 2025
Title: Studies on the role of H3K36 methylation using histone mutants
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Advisor: Konrad Hochedlinger, Ph.D.

Enrique (Quique) Toloza
Wednesday, February 26, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Title: Biophysical specializations supporting efficiency in neural networks
MD-PhD Candidate in MIT - Physics
Advisors: Mark Harnett, Ph.D. and Mehran Kardar, Ph.D.

Kaitlyn Lagattuta
Thursday, February 20, 2025 at 10:00 a.m.
Title: Investigating how sequence variation in T cell receptors  and human leukocyte antigens shapes T cell development
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Bioinformatics & Integrative Genomics
Advisor: Soumya Raychaudhuri, M.D., Ph.D.

Lindsay Overhage
Thursday, February 13, 2023
Title: Essays in Youth Mental Health: Exploring Emergency Care, Policy Interventions, and Pandemic Challenges  
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Health Policy (Methods for Policy Research)
Advisor: Dr. Benjamin Lê Cook, Ph.D.

Ajay Nadig
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Title: Integrative statistical methods for human biology, from biobanks to perturbation atlases
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Bioinformatics & Integrative Genomics 
Advisors: Elise Robinson, Sc.D. and Luke O’Connor, Ph.D.

Tamina Kienka
Thursday, September 26, 2024
Title: Improving CAR T cell persistence in pancreatic cancer using an in vivo CRISPR knockout screen
MD-PhD Candidate in GSAS - Immunology
Advisor: Marcela Maus, M.D., Ph.D.

Cyrus Ayubcha
Thursday, September 12, 2024
Title: Advances in Neuro-Epidemiology: Trend Analysis in Stroke Incidence, Geometric Deep Learning in Neuroimaging Diagnostics, and Statistical Genetics in Human Brain Organization
MD-PhD Candidate in GSAS - Population Health Sciences-Epidemiology
Advisor: Albert Hofman, M.D., Ph.D.

Miriam Zawadzki
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
Title: The identities and roles of cerebrospinal fluid macrophages during development and in the setting of neonatal intraventricular hemorrhage
MD-PhD Candidate in GSAS - Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Advisor: Maria Lehtinen, M.D., Ph.D.

Peter Kalugin
Tuesday, September 3, 2024
Title: Simultaneous tracking of many neuromodulatory signals in the awake mouse brain
MD-PhD Candidate in GSAS - Neuroscience
Advisor: Mark Andermann, Ph.D. and Maria Lehtinen, M.D., Ph.D.

Raj Vatsa
Thursday, August 8th, 2024
Title: Advancing Evidence-Based Maternity Care: Empirical Studies of Technologies, Policies, and Clinical Practices in the U.S. and Abroad
MD-PhD Candidate in GSAS - Health Policy (MPR)
Advisor: Jessica Cohen, Ph.D.

Preston Ge
Tuesday, May 28, 2024
Title: Subcellular Profiling of Dopaminergic Mitochondria: Adaptations to the Axonal Environment in Health and Disease
MD-PhD Candidate in MIT – Brain & Cognitive Sciences
Advisor: Myriam Heiman, Ph.D.

Brittany Petros
Tuesday, April 2, 2024
Title: Genomic methods for the surveillance and epidemiologic inference of respiratory viral pathogens
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Systems, Synthetic, and Quantitative Biology
Advisor: Pardis Sabeti, M.D., Ph.D.

Leonard Nettey
Thursday, April 11, 2024
Title: Evaluating Immunological Treatment and Prevention Strategies Using Single-Cell Genomics
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Immunology
Advisor: Alex K. Shalek, Ph.D.

Anusha Nathan
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Title:  Rational Design of CD8+ T Cell Vaccines for SARS-CoV-2
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Immunology
Advisor: Gaurav Gaiha, M.D., D.Phil.

Thomas Xu
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Title: Surface display of proteins on bone marrow-derived dendritic cells induces humoral immune responses and anaphylaxis
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Immunology
Advisor: Shiv Pillai, M.D., Ph.D.

Nicita Mehta
Monday March 18, 2024
Title: Integrated Molecular and Histopathological Study of Germ Cell Tumors
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Bioinformatics & Integrative Genomics 
Advisor: Eliezer Van Allen, M.D.

Kathleen Higgins
Friday March 8, 2024
Title: Rapid expansion and specialization of the bitter taste receptor family in amphibians
MD-PhD Candidate in MIT – Biology
Advisor: Jing-Ke Weng, Ph.D.

Chanthia C. Ma
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Title: Genomic Studies in Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE): From External Traumas to Genetic Alterations
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Advisor: Christopher A. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D.

Catherine Koch
Friday March 1, 2024
Title: Utilizing in vivo genome-wide crispr-cas9 screens in an immunocompetent mouse model of glioblastoma to identify novel tumor liabilities and explore mechanisms of resistance to car-t
MD-PhD Candidate in MIT-Biology
Advisor: Michael Hemann, Ph.D.

Samantha Hoffman
Monday February 26, 2024
Title: Multiomic insights into gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumor biology
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Advisor: Eliezer Van Allen, M.D.

William Mannherz
Friday, February 9, 2024
Title: Control of human telomerase activity by nucleotide metabolism
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Advisor: Suneet Agarwal, M.D., Ph.D.

Sarah Chang
Wednesday, February 7, 2024
Title: Control of Cellular Redox State and Biomass Synthesis
MD-PhD Candidate in MIT Biology
Advisor: Matthew Vander Heiden, M.D., Ph.D.

Adam Berger
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Title: Systematic engineering of controlled, localized oligonucleotide delivery systems for wound angiogenesis
MD-PhD Candidate in MIT HST – MEMP
Advisor: Paula T. Hammond, Ph.D.

Alaina Bever
Friday, January 19th, 2024
Title: Genetic, metabolomic, and lifestyle dynamics in colorectal cancer and chronic disease prevention
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Population Health Science -Epidemiology
Advisor: Mingyang Song, Sc.D.

Laurie Rumker
Friday, December 15, 2023
Title: Modeling inter-individual variation in single-cell datasets to detect cell state abundance associations to clinical features and genetic variants
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Bioinformatics & Integrative Genomics
Advisor: Soumya Raychaudhuri, M.D., Ph.D.

Alissa Campbell Goss
Thursday, December 7, 2023
Title: TMEDs are differential regulators of mutant membrane proteins 
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Advisor: Anna Greka, M.D., Ph.D.

Leah Pierson
Thursday, November 16, 2023
Title: Ethics Amidst Uncertainty: Essays on Global Health Priority Setting
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Population Health Sciences-Global Health Population
Advisor: Stéphane Verguet, M.P.P., Ph.D.

Annabel Wang
Friday, September 15, 2023
Title: Health Care Variation and Its Determinants: Studies on Physician Quality, Cancer Screening, and Cardiovascular Care
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Health Policy (MPR)
Advisors: J. Michael McWilliams, M.D., Ph.D. (Chair); Jessica L. Cohen, Ph.D.; David M. Cutler, Ph.D.

Spencer Luster
Wednesday, September 13, 2023
Title: Understanding the Health Care Delivery System: Empirical Investigations of Insurer Site of Care Policies and Physician Competencies
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Health Policy (Ecomonomics)
Advisor: Michael Chernew, Ph.D.

Katherine Warren
Friday, September 1, 2023
Title: Clause of Death: The Social Lives of U.S. Obituaries, 1918-2023
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Anthropology
Advisor: Arthur Kleinman, M.D.

Jacob Anderson
Friday, August 31, 2023
Title: Unveiling the Molecular Architecture of Mammalian Ciliary Doublet Microtubules and Mechanisms of von Willebrand Factor Concatemerization
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Chemical Biology
Advisor: Alan Brown, Ph.D.

Jenny Lai
Tuesday, August 29, 2023
Title: Functional genomic dissection of human brain development, degeneration, and dysfunction in pediatric neurogenetic disorders
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Neuroscience
Advisors: Timothy W. Yu, M.D., Ph.D., & Eunjung Alice Lee, Ph.D.

Teshika Jayewickreme
Tuesday, August 22, 2023
Title: Lymph Node Stromal Cell Responses to Perinatal T Cell Waves
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Immunology
Advisors: Diane Mathis, Ph.D. and Christophe Benoist, M.D., Ph.D.

Sharon Heejin Kim
Friday, June 16, 2023
Title: The Gordian Knot of Oxygen and Iron
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Advisor: Vamsi K. Mootha, M.D.

Carla Winter
Tuesday, June 13, 2023
Title: The road from thought to action: a brainwide atlas of spinal projecting neurons
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Advisor: Zhigang He, Ph.D., B.M.

Kaitavjeet Chowdhary
Friday, June 2, 2023
Title: Decoding Regulatory T Cell Transcription Factor Networks: From Identity to Diversity 
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Immunology
Advisors: Diane Mathis, Ph.D. and Christophe Benoist, M.D., Ph.D.

Kaustav A. Gopinathan
Thursday, June 1, 2023 at 9:30 a.m.
Title: Microfluidic Transistors for the Control of Liquids and Particles
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Biophysics
Advisor: Mehmet Toner, Ph.D. 

Elliot Akama-Garren
Friday, May 26, 2023
Title: T Cell Help Shapes B Cell Tolerance
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Immunology
Advisor: Michael C. Carroll, Ph.D.

Dylan Neel
Friday, May 26, 2023 at 12:30 p.m.
Title: Gasdermin-E mediates mitochondrial damage in axons and neurodegeneration
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Advisor: Isaac Chiu, Ph.D.

Suchita Nety
Thursday, May 25, 2023
Title: The transposon-encoded protein TnpB is an RNA-guided nuclease
MD-PhD Candidate in MIT – Biological Engineering
Advisor: Feng Zhang, Ph.D.

Emily Rencsok
Monday, May 1, 2023 at 2:00 p.m.
Title: Racial disparities in the care of patients with advanced prostate cancer: an analysis of patient-reported outcome and experience measures
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Population Health Sciences in Epidemiology
Advisor: Lorelei Mucci, Sc.D.  

Dana Vigue
Thursday, April 13, 2023 at 1:00 p.m.
Title: “Strength is a Product of Trust” An Ethnographic Study of Trauma-Informed Weight Lifting in the United States
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Anthropology
Advisor: Arthur Kleinman, M.D.

Joyce Kang
Wednesday, April 12, 2023 at 2:00 p.m.
Title: Integrative analysis of large-scale single-cell genomics data in immune-mediated diseases
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Bioinformatics & Integrative Genomics
Advisor: Soumya Raychaudhuri, M.D., Ph.D.

Rahul Gupta
Thursday, March 23, 2023 at 1:00 p.m.
Title: Nuclear genetic control of mitochondrial function and its contribution to human disease: insights at biobank scaleMD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Genetics and Genomics
Advisors: Vamsi Mootha, M.D., and Benjamin Neale, Ph.D.

Joseph Sedlak
Friday, March 10, 2023 at 10:00 a.m.
Title: The Role of Prostaglandins and a High-fat Diet in Colorectal Cancer Metastasis
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Biophysics
Advisor: Ömer Yilmaz, M.D., Ph.D.

Layla Siraj
Tuesday, February 28, 2023 at 1:00 p.m.
Title: TBD
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS - Biophysics
Advisors: Eric Lander, D. Phil., and Hilary Finucane, Ph.D.

Dan Rubin
Friday, February 24, 2023 at 9:00 a.m.
Title: Mechanisms and acquisition of antibiotic resistance in N. gonorrhoeae
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Advisors: Yonatan Grad, M.D., Ph.D., and Matthew Waldor, M.D., Ph.D.

Juliana Fried Coraor
Monday, February 6, 2023 at 11 a.m.
Title: FALCON systematically interrogates FFA biology and identifies new mediators of lipotoxicity
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Division of Medical Sciences Program in Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Advisor: Anna Greka, M.D., Ph.D.

Daniel Michelson
Wednesday, February 1, 2023 at 2 p.m.
Title: Thymic Mechanisms of T Cell Tolerance
MD-PhD Candidate in Harvard University GSAS – Immunology
Advisor: Diane Mathis, Ph.D. and Christophe Benoist, M.D., Ph.D.