Our Community - Sanford Burnham Prebys

Our Students, Graduates and Faculty

Two scientists working in a lab

Our Community

Our highly individualized education is designed to focus on your scientific interests and career goals.

At the heart of the program is mentorship by outstanding faculty. Unique aspects of the Sanford Burnham Prebys PhD program include:

  • Highly personalized curriculum with 1:2 tutorials
  • Career advising and support in research training
  • Immigration support
  • Training also offered in:
    • Writing and presentation skills
    • Leadership development
    • Career and professional development

Select Profiles of Current Graduate Students

Portrait of Michael Alcaraz

Michael Alcaraz

  • Michael’s work focuses on understanding the epigenetic changes that occur in humans as we age and how these changes lead to a higher cancer incidence.
Adams Lab
Portrait of Ceda Stamenkovic

Ceda Stamenkovic

  • Ceda studies muscle stem cells and is using mouse genetic models to understand how loss of heterogeneity of muscle stem cells is linked to the depletion of muscle mass that occurs in aging.
Sacco Lab

Current Graduate Students

Michael Alcaraz
Michael’s work focuses on understanding the epigenetic changes that occur in humans as we age and how these changes lead to higher cancer incidence.

Nahal Azimi, DDS
Nahal is interested in refractory subtypes of acute myeloid leukemia, and focuses on the mechanisms that drive these tumors and mediate resistance to therapy.

Aaliyah Balagtas

Carolina Cano Macip

Maria Cavarlez
Maria studies extracellular vesicles in the brain to understand their role in cellular communication and impact on neurological diseases.

Yu-Ling (Linda) Chang
Linda’s research focuses on identifying novel barriers to cell reprograming to regenerate cardiomyocytes and investigating the mechanism of barriers in cell fate determination and reprogramming.

Win Ning Chen, MS

Savio Chow, MS
Savio’s work investigates gene regulatory mechanisms and their perturbations in human diseases, using computational modeling and machine learning approaches to study drug responses.

Zong Ming Chua
Zong Ming’s work focuses on understanding the aging process through altering the stability of the epigenome.

Alyssa Cruz

Ximena Diaz Olea
Ximena studies how the RNF5 microbiome can control antitumor immunity.

Anais Equey, MS

Jordan Friedlein, MS
Jordan’s work uses mouse models and genetic engineering techniques to identify mutations in cancer cells that act as a lifeline to many cancer types.

Cheska Maria Galapate

Marcos Garcia Teneche
Marcos seeks to elucidate the mechanisms of leukemia initiation and progression with age.

Shea Grenier, MS
Shea’s work explores metabolic adaptations that promote the development and progression of Ras-mutant cancers.

Gabriele Guarnaccia, MS
Gabriele is interested in muscle regeneration and 3D bio-printing. His research focuses on finding new therapies to recover great muscle damages and slow the progression of degenerative diseases like dystrophies.

Laurence Haddadin

Patrick Hagan
Patrick studies how autophagy and ULK1/2 contribute to cancer therapy resistance and seeks to develop and test inhibitors to these targets to improve treatment outcomes.

Sophie Hao
Sophie focuses on understanding Notch signaling and its role in liver regeneration with applications to diseases such as Alagille Syndrome.

Erik Hultenius

Rema Iyer
Rema is interested in understanding the role of genetic and epigenetic factors in the progression of cancers and finding meaningful therapies for patients.

Alisha Kirkland

Evodie Koutouan, MS

Aashna Lamba, MS
Aashna’s research focuses on characterizing cell fate stabilization using cell painting and HTS to profile cell morphology during cancer cell transformation.

Caitlin Lange

Brightany Li, MS

Tianhui Liu
Tianhui is interested in the role of autophagy in stress-induced cellular senescence.

Texia Loh
Texia uses small module degrades to understand the role of epigenetic regulators in DNA damage repair.


Ryan Loughran
Ryan is working to uncover new and important roles of phosphoinositide lipid kinase signaling in the context of tumor cell metabolism.

Katya Marchetti
Katya explores the underlying genetic mechanisms involved in heart development and congenital heart disease using the fruit fly and zebrafish as model organisms.

Joshua Minyard

Lauren Molony

Tatiana Moreno
Tatiana explores how autophagy is regulated upon hormetic stress and aging in the nematode C. elegans and mammalian/human systems.

Namratha Nadig

Ashley Neil

Monica Nicolau, MS

Ruslan Nuryyev, MS
Ruslan’s research focuses on examining progenitor cells in a hypothermic environment in an effort to develop a neuroprotective treatment for hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy.

Utkarsha Paithane
Utkarsha’s research focuses on genetic mutations that contribute to cancer initiation.

Aditi Pedgaonkar, MS
Aditi’s research elucidates epigenetic mechanisms underlying the progression of acute myeloid leukemia.

Megha Raghunathan, MS

Adarsh Rajesh
Adarsh uses cell biology and bioinformatic techniques to unlock the cellular mechanisms behind aging and age-associated diseases.

Daniel Rebibo
Daniel’s research focuses on identifying novel aberrations in leukemia by integrating omics information through a computational approach.

Michaela Romero
Michaela’s research seeks to identify novel cardiac disease-associated pathways and innovative cardiac regenerative strategies using in vitro models and an automated screening platform.

Anis Shahnaee, PharmD
Anis is interested in single-cell isoform sequencing and investigating reverse transcriptase activity within the context of Alzheimer’s disease.

Jeffrey Snowbarger

Cedomir Stamenkovic
Ceda studies muscle stem cells and is using mouse genetic models to understand how loss of heterogeneity of muscle stem cells is linked to the depletion of muscle mass that occurs in aging.

Shiqi Su

Jessica Wang

Jiaqian (Emily) Wu, MS
Emily’s research focuses on developing small drug inhibitors for cancer therapeutics and neuropsychiatric disorders.

Skye Xu
Skye investigates the role of ATF6 in maintaining synaptic integrity through an EGR1 dependent pathway in Alzheimer’s disease.

Sviatlana Zaretski
Sviatlana studies the role of autophagy in such age-associated phenomena as cellular senescence to understand the interplay of the key components and how autophagy is re-modelled upon entering senescence, which may help identify possible interventions and promote healthy aging.

Hanxiao Zhang, MS
Hanxiao’s research focuses on proteasome assembly by tagging and purifying endogenous proteasome chaperons in the human cell and studying the structure by Cryo-EM.

Chenyu Zhou, MS
Chenyu’s work examines the structure of various proteins under different physiological status using Cryo-EM and other imaging technologies.

Zhouting Zhu, MS
Zhouting investigates RNA methylation pathways and their impact on cancer development, as well as identification of small molecule inhibitors of targets involved in cancer.

“Sanford Burnham Prebys graduate students are bright and highly driven with a clear focus on their next career step. Upon graduation, most of our students have moved on to become successful biomedical researchers in both fields of industry and academia.”

Portrait of Alessandra Sacco, PhD
Alessandra Sacco, PhD Professor and Dean,
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences

Select Profiles of GSBS Alumni

Portrait of Mallika Iyer, PhD

Mallika Iyer PhD

  • “I think our program is really unique. Its small size means that each student gets a lot of attention, and we have an Office of Education, Training and International Services (OETIS) that really offers us a lot of great resources to help us shape our careers.”
Portrait of Marisa Sanchez, PhD

Marisa Sanchez PhD

  • “I chose to study at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute because it is leading the frontiers of translational biomedical research. I have always had a fascination for research and discovering new ways to improve the lives of people suffering from disease.”

Miguel Reina Campos PhD

  • “I was drawn to Sanford Burnham Prebys for its clinically oriented goals, state of the art facilities and the great talent that inhabits the institution. It appeared to me as the perfect blend of the will to cure and the genuine curiosity that drives the finest basic research.”

Graduate School Faculty