Ph.D. Research

I am a current Biomedical Ph.D. Candiate at Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University. My work under the mentorship of Dr. Johnathan Whetstine focuses on chromatin factors that control gene expression and genome stability. The Whetstine Lab is a part of the Cancer Epigenetics Institute and is located at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

Temple University Publications

Since joining the lab, I have had the fortunate opportunity to collaborate and publish several first author and co-authored primary articles and reviews:

My co-first authored review was published in Cell in April 2025 titled, “20 years of histone lysine demethylases: From discovery to the clinic and beyond“.

My first author review was published in Genes & Development in June 2024 titled, “Epigenetic modulators provide a path to understanding disease and therapeutic opportunity“. We also got the cover artwork for this edition of G&D!

Zach and I collaborated on a blog article for the lay audience for The Science Breaker about the Cell publication, “Keeping the balance: How epigenetics monitors cancer genes“.

My first co-authored work out of the lab was published in Cell in October 2023, “Epigenetic balance ensures mechanistic control of MLL amplification and rearrangement“.

Masters Research

My work done at SJU for my bachelor’s and master’s was under the mentorship of Dr. Matthew Nelson focusing on identifying the molecular mechanisms underlying sleep behavior in the microscopic nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.

A model for sickness sleep, which occurs in mammals, has been developed in the genetic model organism Caenorhabditis elegans called stress-induced sleep (SIS). SIS occurs following an animal’s exposure to a damaging stressor, like injury, high heat, or infection. The behavior of SIS consists of the animals inhibiting their movement and feeding behaviors, which likely occurs in order for them to reallocate resources towards cellular repair.

My project delves into the mechanisms controlling the behavioral aspects of SIS. Specifically, I helped identify sleep-regulating neuropeptides coded for by the gene nlp-14. NLP-14 peptides are homologous to Orcokinins which are conserved broadly among Ecdysozoans. We found that over-expression of the nlp-14 gene causes a strong sleep phenotype, evident by the animals’ cessation of movement and their rhythmic defecation cycle. We propose that the orcokinins play an important and conserved sleep-regulating role within ecdysozoans.