Alexander Julian

Alexander joined the lab as a PhD candidate in 2021 following a short internship in 2020 — apparently, we somehow failed to scare him away! Alexander PhD will focus on computational genomics and his work will include programming, machine learning, DNA sequencing and analysis.

Caroline Mascarenhas

Caroline (Anne Caroline Mascarenhas dos Santos) initially worked in the lab in the summer of 2016 as part of the Brazilian Scientific Mobility Program (BSMP) and decided to come back to pursue her PhD here with us. Arriving in the thick of January with shoes, no socks and what could be best described as a spring jacket, Caroline may have underestimated Chicago’s winter climate. Now properly settled in, Caroline will be working on the lab’s genomics and metagenomics initiatives.

Jean-François Pombert

I started at Illinois Tech in August 2013, where I teach Linux, Perl programming, bioinformatics and genomics to undergraduate and graduate students in addition to my research. I pride myself on being a fun guy to work with but my usual advice to students is to avoid standing between me and my coffee mug. Hobbies include piling up excessive amounts of work on my PhD candidates and making sure that they do not have enough time to perform the corresponding tasks.