People

Mansi Srivastava

Mansi received her A.B. in Biological Sciences from Mount Holyoke College and her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California at Berkeley. For her graduate research, she studied comparative genomics of early-diverging animal lineages including cnidarians, placozoans, and sponges under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Rokhsar. In 2009, she began her postdoctoral research on the evolution of regenerative mechanisms in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Reddien at the Whitehead Institute/MIT. She is interested in using an evolutionary perspective to uncover the mechanisms of animal regeneration.

Mansi[at]oeb.harvard.edu

Sarah Arnold, Research Assistant

Sarah received her B.A. in Biology from the College of the Holy Cross. As an undergraduate, she worked in Dr. Geoff Findlay’s lab studying putative de novo evolved genes and their role in fertility in Drosophila melanogaster. Her work as the research assistant in the Srivastava lab includes worm husbandry and lab upkeep.

searnold[at]fas.harvard.edu

Vikram Chandra, Postdoctoral Researcher

Vikram received his BA in Biological Sciences from the University of Oxford in 2014. He then moved to New York City to do a PhD in social evolution and behavior with Daniel Kronauer at The Rockefeller University. In his PhD, Vikram studied the origin and elaboration of colony life in ants. In the Srivastava lab, Vikram hopes to establish the three-banded panther worm as a model for behavioral neuroscience, and to study the evolution of complex nervous systems.

vchandra1[at]fas.harvard.edu

Allison Kann, Postdoctoral Researcher

Allison received her B.S. in Cell Biology from Christopher Newport University and her Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. For her graduate work, Allison worked under the supervision of Dr. Robert Krauss, studying the role of Rho GTPases and cytoskeletal dynamics in skeletal muscle stem cell activation. In the Srivastava lab, Allison hopes to uncover mechanisms of cell adhesion and juxtacrine signaling within the pluripotent stem cell niche, further developing Hofstenia miamia as a model system for regenerative cell biology.

allisonkann[at]fas.harvard.edu

Paul Alexander Kai Bump, Postdoctoral Researcher

Paul received his B.S. in Marine Biology with Honors from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and his Ph.D. in Biology from Stanford University. For his graduate research, he studied how the cellular composition changes during the process of metamorphosis in indirect-developing hemichordates under the supervision of Dr. Christopher Lowe. In the Srivastava Lab, is interested in understanding how pluripotent stem cells are made and maintained. Paul is passionate about exploring a broad range of organisms across the tree of life, appreciating the power of diverse perspectives, and bringing the beauty of developmental biology to the classroom.

paulbump[@]fas.harvard.edu

Ryan Hulett, Graduate Student

Ryan received his B.S. in Molecular Environmental Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. During his senior year, he investigated the community ecology of molluscs and became fascinated with nudibranchs. This led him to pursue a M.S. in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology from San Francisco State University where he studied the evolution of color patterns and biogeography in tritoniid nudibranchs. In 2014, he joined Dr. Nicole King’s lab at the University of California, Berkeley as a research technician working on with the genetic basis of multicellularity and bacterial interactions in choanoflagellates. In the Srivastava lab, he is interested in the mechanisms governing nervous system patterning and neural cell type evolution.

rhulett[at]g.harvard.edu
http://ryanehulett.weebly.com/

Amber Rock, Graduate Student

Amber received her B.A. in Biology from Bowdoin College. During her undergrad, she spent two summers working in Mark Martindale’s lab at the University of Florida’s Whitney Lab for Marine Bioscience where she studied the role of Hox genes in the cnidarian, Nematostella vectensis. In the Srivastava lab, she is interested in cell fate determination in Hofstenia and developmental compensation.

arock[at]g.harvard.edu

Katy Loubet-Senear, Graduate Student

Katy received her B.A. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR. For her undergraduate research, she studied biogeography and evolution of arachnid lineages in the Caribbean in Dr. Greta Binford’s lab, focusing on the Anyphaenid family of spiders. She then worked as a research technician in Dr. Larry Loeb’s lab at the University of Washington studying subclonal mutations in human cancers.

kloubetsenear[at]g.harvard.edu

Carlos Rivera-Lopez, Graduate Student

Carlos received his B.S. in Biology from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. During his undergraduate studies, he researched the genetic evolution of endangered species that are endemic to the Caribbean, including the Puerto Rican parrot. Now in the Srivastava Lab, he is interested in studying the potency and dynamics of Hofstenia neoblasts during regeneration. Outside of the lab, he is interested in amplifying Latinx diversity and inclusion in STEM.

criveralopez[at]fas.harvard.edu
https://latinxinstem.education

Catriona Breen, Graduate Student

Catriona received her BS in Biological Sciences at Cornell University. As an undergraduate, she worked with Dr. Amy McCune on the developmental genetics of the lung-to-gas bladder evolutionary transition in ray-finned fishes. She then worked in the lab of Dr. Marcos Simoes-Costa, studying how transcriptional enhancers cooperate to produce precise gene expression patterns during chick embryonic development. In the Srivastava lab, she is interested in mechanisms of axial patterning during regeneration in Hofstenia.

cbreen[at]g.harvard.edu

D. Marcela Bolaños, Research Associate

Marcela is a marine biologist from Colombia and received her Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of New Hampshire. For over 16 years, her research has been focused on the taxonomy, systematics, and development of marine flatworms of the order Polycladida. Marce’s deepening knowledge of polyclads increased and focused her interest in polyclad regeneration. This major career transition brought her to the Srivastava lab where she is studying the function of the Planar Cell Polarity (PCP) signaling during regeneration. Marce is interested in understanding polarity and weather intracellular directional information mediated by PCP pathway components plays a role in antero-posterior polarity decision during Hofstenia whole body regeneration.

bolanosrodriguez[at]fas.harvard.edu

Lab Alumni

Undergraduates
Dierdre Potter - Senior Analyst, Ambit, Inc.
Elizabeth D'Haiti - Missionary, The Fellowship of Catholic University Students
Annika Gompers - Graduate Student, Cambridge University
Juliet Kim - M.D. Candidate, NYU School of Medecine
Andree Franco-Vazquez - M.D. Candidate in the Program in Medical Education (PRIME), David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Sylvia Golumbeanu

Graduates
Julian Kimura
Alyson Ramirez - Principal Scientific Researcher at Genentech

Postdocs
Andrew Gehrke - Senior Scientist at Biogen
Lorenzo Ricci
Yi Jyun Luo

Research Assistants
Emily Neverett - Forensic Scientist, Massachusetts State Police
Vanessa Poirier - University of South Carolina Graduate School of Pharmacology

Rotation Students
Megan He (Hsu Lab)
Abby Knecht (Gibbs Lab)
Elizabeth May (Gaudet Lab)
Darcy Mishkind (Tabin Lab)
Vincent Pham (D'Souza Lab)
Will Xiao

Visitors
Jan Engelhardt - Researcher, University of Leipzig
James Sikes - Associate Professor, University of San Francisco