Team
Principal Investigators
Malachi Griffith, PhD
Role: Principal Investigator
Bio: Dr. Griffith is Associate Professor of Medicine (Oncology) and Genetics and Assistant Director of the McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University. Dr. Griffith’s research is focused on the development of personalized medicine strategies for cancer. He develops bioinformatics tools and methods for the analysis of high throughput sequence data to improve our understanding of cancer biology, treatment and mechanisms of resistance. In past few years, immunogenomics has become a major focus of his research. Dr. Griffith is a co-chair of the Global Alliance for Genomic Health Variant Interpretation for Cancer Consortium and also co-hair of the ClinGen Somatic Clinical Domain Working Group. He has published over 110 studies, received numerous research awards and honors and held several large grants from the NIH including a K99/R00 Career Development Award, U01/U24 for Development of Informatics Technologies for Cancer Research, and others. He has mentored more than 50 bioinformatics trainees and taught more than 500 as an instructor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories and several international research institutions and Bioinformatics Workshops organizations.
Obi L. Griffith, PhD
Role: Principal Investigator
Bio: Dr. Griffith is Associate Professor of Medicine (Oncology) and Genetics and Assistant Director of the McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University. Dr. Griffith’s research is focused on the development of personalized medicine strategies for cancer. He develops bioinformatics tools and methods for the analysis of high throughput sequence data and identification of biomarkers for diagnostic, prognostic and drug response prediction. Dr Griffith is on the board of directors for the Cancer Genomics Committee, Steering Committee for the Global Alliance for Genomic Health, co-chair of the Variant Interpretation for Cancer Consortium, and editorial board for Cell Reports. He has published over 100 studies, received numerous research awards and honors and held several large grants from the NIH including a K22 Transition Career Development Award, U01/U24 for Development of Informatics Technologies for Cancer Research, and others. He has mentored more than 30 bioinformatics trainees and taught hundreds more as an instructor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories and the Canadian Bioinformatics Workshops.
Faculty
Arpad Danos, PhD
Role: Instructor in Medicine
Bio: Dr. Danos is an Instructor in the Griffith Lab at the McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University School of Medicine. He received undergraduate degrees in mathematics and physics at the University of Chicago. He performed graduate studies in the fields of Diabetes and Cancer Metabolism and received his PhD from the Committee on Molecular Metabolism and Nutrition and the University of Chicago. He also spent time working in IT as well as teaching science and mathematics, and received the Wayne C. Booth graduate student prize for excellence in teaching while at University of Chicago. His interests include applying and developing mathematical techniques to areas of basic and clinical cancer research, and at the Griffith Lab, his projects include working on the Clinical Interpretations of Variants in Cancer (CIViC) knowledgebase, as well as characterization of novel mutations important for cancer which exist in non-coding space.
Kilannin Krysiak, PhD
Role: LGG Fellow
Bio: Dr. Krysiak is a Fellow of the Laboratory Genetics and Genomics program in the Department of Pathology and Immunology. Her work focuses on the analysis and interpretation of genomic and transcriptomic sequence data produced from a variety of cancer types. Her primary interest is in the use of genomic data to improve the current standards of patient care. Since joining the McDonnell Genome Institute in 2014 she has been involved in comprehensive analysis of cancer patient cohorts as well as small and n-of-1 studies. In collaboration with the Genomics Tumor Board, she has led the analysis of case studies in order to better understand the molecular underpinnings of multiple hematologic cancers. Currently, her primary project is leading the analysis of >400 cases of follicular lymphoma in order to identify genomic events which can predict clinical outcomes for patients with this type of cancer. Applying her experience with these analyses and her predoctoral work on the genetics of myelodysplastic syndromes, she has been part of the team of developers and researchers that created and is actively expanding the open-source, community driven Clinical Interpretations of Variants in Cancer (CIViC) knowledgebase.
Jason Saliba, PhD
Role: Instructor of Medicine
Bio: Dr. Saliba is an Instructor in the Griffith Lab at the Washington University School of Medicine. He received a BSc in Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics from the University of Maryland in 2006. He completed his PhD in Molecular and Human Genetics in 2015 at Baylor College of Medicine where he studied germline susceptibility genes in pediatric leukemia and pharmacogenetics. His training continued as a postdoctoral fellow studying the pharmacogenetic mechanisms of somatic relapse drivers in pediatric leukemia at NYU Langone Health. Now, he holds the role of Editor for the Clinical Interpretations of Variants in Cancer (CIViC) knowledgebase. His primary responsibilities are the editorial maintenance of CIViC through thorough mining and understanding of peer-reviewed cancer literature, driving the evolution of the knowledgebase, and fostering enhancements through training and collaborations.
Postdoctoral Researchers and Fellows
Graduate Students
My Hoang, BA
Role: Graduate Student
Bio: My is a graduate student in the Computational and Systems Biology program at Washington University in St. Louis. She graduated from Earlham College in 2020 with a degree in Biochemistry.
Mariam Khanfar, MSc
Role: Graduate Student
Bio: Mariam is a graduate student in the Human and Statistical Genetics program at Washington University in St. Louis. She graduated from Jordan University of Science and Technology in Jordan in 2016 with a B.S. in Medical Laboratory Sciences and a Masters in Diagnostic Molecular Biology and Human Genetics in 2019.
Allen Li, MSc
Role: Graduate Student
Bio: Allen is a graduate student in the Computational and Systems Biology program at Washington University in St. Louis. He graduated from Tsinghua University in 2021 with a B.S. in Biological Science and from Harvard University in 2023 with an M.Sc. in Computational Biology and Quantitative Genetics.
Isabel Risch, BSc
Role: Graduate Student
Bio: Isabel is currently an MD/PhD student in the Computational and Systems Biology program. She completed her undergraduate education at WashU, where she received degrees in Spanish and Biology. She is interested in using bioinformatics to explore the ways in which the immune system interacts with various disease processes, including cancer.
Kartik Singhal, BSc
Role: Graduate Student
Bio: Kartik is a graduate student in the Molecular Genetics and Genomics program at Washington University in St. Louis. He graduated from University of California, Davis in 2018 with a degree in Biotechnology. He is interested in using single cell genomic and transcriptomic techniques to better understand the immune response to tumors.
Jennie Yao, MSc
Role: Graduate Student
Bio: Jennie is a PhD student in Molecular Genetics and Genomics. She earned her undergraduate degree in Health & Disease and Statistics from the University of Toronto, followed by an M.Sc. in Biostatistics from Johns Hopkins University.
Staff
Katie Campbell, Phd
Role: Staff Scientist
Bio: Katie is currently a post doctoral fellow in the Ribas lab at UCLA but continues part time in the lab. Katie completed her PhD in the Molecular Cell Biology program at Washington University in St. Louis in 2018. She graduated from Penn State University in 2014 with honors in Biochemistry. Katie has been awarded positions in the Precision Medicine and Cancer Biology Pathways at Washington University, and is interested in utilizing genomics and informatics approaches to study cancer and tumor immunology in order to understand mechanisms of drug and treatment sensitivity. Her thesis research is focused on characterizing models of and defining therapeutic opportunities in head and neck cancer. Katie has also contributed to other projects in the lab, including CIViC, GenVisR, pVACtools, and DGIdb, as well as analyzing cancer case studies for the Washington University Genomics Tumor Board. Katie’s additional talents include saying the alphabet backwards, standing on her head, and regularly drinking large amounts of coffee.
Adam Coffman
Role: Software Developer, Web/Back-end developer
Bio: Adam is a software developer at the McDonnell Genome Institute. He is an expert in back-end, database, and web design. He works with the Griffith Lab to develop bioinformatics tools, databases, and other resources. He was the lead back-end developer for CIViC, DGIdb, and others.
Kelsy Cotto, PhD
Role: Staff Scientist
Bio: Kelsy was a PhD student and then postdoctoral fellow in the Griffith lab. She received her PhD from the Molecular Cell Biology program at Washington University in St. Louis in 2022. She completed her undergraduate degree at Mercer University in 2016, where she earned a B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. She is interested in developing methods to analyze multiple types of sequencing data in order to better understand regulatory mutations and splicing within cancer, with the hope of identifying novel biomarkers. Currently, she is involved with DGIdb, Regtools, analysis of large scale clinical cohorts, and work on neoantigen vaccine cases. She currently works as an expert consultant for the lab while also working in industry
Bryan Fisk
Role: Staff Scientist/Bioinformatician
Bio: Bryan is currently pursuing a Masters in Bioinformatics at St. Louis University. Bryan is working on single cell RNA analysis projects in the lab.
Susanna Kiwala, MEng
Role: Programmer Analyst
Bio: Susanna is a Programmer Analyst at the McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis. She obtained her M.eng in Computer Science from Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. She is the lead software developer for the Clinical Interpretations of Variants in Cancer project, the Drug Gene Interaction Database, and pVACtools.
Joshua McMichael
Role: Software Developer, UX Developer
Bio: Josh is a software developer at the McDonnell Genome Institute. He is an expert in front-end and user experience design. He works with the Griffith Lab to develop bioinformatics tools and resources and novel visualizations. He is the lead front-end developer for CIViC, pVACtools, and others.
Nilan Patel, BSc
Role: Staff Curator
Bio: Nilan is a medical student at Saint Louis University currently working on the CiVIC knowledgebase project as a biocurator. He also attended Saint Louis University where he graduated with a B.S. in Medical Sciences with minors in Biology and Psychology. He joined Griffith Lab as part of the ASPIRE program.
Evelyn A. Schmidt, BSc
Role: Bioinformatics Data Analyst
Bio: Evelyn is bioinformatics research analyst in the Griffith Lab at Washington University in St. Louis. She graduated from Truman State University, Kirksville in 2023 with a degree in Computer Science.
Zachary L. Skidmore, MEng
Role: Staff Scientist/Bioinformatician
Bio: Zach is a staff scientist at the McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University in Saint Louis. His undergraduate work was completed at the Ohio State University where he obtained a B.Sc. in molecular biology. His Graduate work was performed at the University of Illinois where he obtained a M.eng in bioinformatics. His research focus is in the realm of cancer biology where he uses and develops tools and techniques to aid in the analysis and interpretation of cancer sequencing data. He leads maintenance/development on the bioconductor package GenVisR, a graphics program designed to visualize cohort level genomic data. He is the creator and a primary instructor for the Genomic Data Visualization and Interpretation workshop course and is the webmaster for many of the griffith lab websites. Currently his primary research project is the genomic evaluation of non-cirrhotic hepatocellular carcinoma.
Students and Interns
Brian Li
Role: Intern
Bio: Brian is a WASHU undergraduate student. Brian is working on the CIViC project with the lab.
Luke Hendrickson
Role: Intern
Bio: Luke is a graduate student in the Computer Science program at Missouri University of Science and Technology. He received his B.S. in Computer Science and a minor in Bioinformatics from Missouri University of Science and Technology in 2024. He is working with the lab as a part of the 2024 Summer Genomics Program. He is primarily working on the pVACtools project with the lab.
Binghan Yan
Role: Intern
Bio: Binghan is a class of 2027 undergraduate student in Computational Biology. He is working on comparing tools that try to predict neoantigen-TCR interactions.
Johnny Yang
Role: Intern
Bio: Johnny is a class of 2025 undergraduate student in Chemistry. He joined the lab as an ASPIRE summer scholar student in 2024 summer. He is currently working on a pVACtools project in the lab.
Alumni
Ben Ainscough, BSc
Role: Graduate Student
Bio: Ben successfully completed his PhD in the Human and Statistical Genetics program at Washington University in St. Louis. His research was focused on computational method development to improve the detection of biologically important somatic variants. Specifically, he was interested in applying machine learning algorithms to improve genomic analysis and enable precision medicine. Additionally, he led the team to create the Database of Curated Mutations, and was a primary contributor to DGIdb and CIViC. Ben received his BSc from Brigham Young University majoring in Bioinformatics with University Honors. In his free time, Ben enjoys mountain biking, watching BYU sports, and spending time with his wife and children. He is now a Data Scientist at Domo.
Sydney Anderson
Role: Lab Assistant/Staff Curator
Bio: Sydney is an undergraduate student at the University of Pittburgh. Sydney joined the lab as part of the Siteman’s Leah Menshouse Springer Summer Opportunities program.
Akshay Balaji
Role: Summer student
Bio: Akshay is an undergraduate student at the Washington University. Akshay joined the lab as part of the WASHU BioSURF program.
Erica Barnell, BSc
Role: MD/PhD Student
Bio: Erica graduated from Cornell University in 2013 with a dual degree in Biological Sciences and Applied Economics & Management. In 2013, Erica matriculated into the MD/PhD Program at the Washington University School of Medicine. She completed her MD/PhD with a focus on Molecular Genetics and Genomics in 2023. Within the Griffith lab, Erica focused on developing a CIViC capture panel for direct evaluation of clinically relevant tumors linked to clinical relevances summaries.
Anamika Basu
Role: Intern
Bio: Anamika was a WashU undergraduate student. Anamika worked on a cfDNA project with the lab.
Kaitlin Clark
Role: Undergraduate Student, uSTAR Fellow
Bio: Kaitlin Clark was an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in Computational Biology and Genomics. She joined the Griffith Lab as a curator for the Clinical Interpretation of Variants in Cancer (CIViC) project. Her ongoing interests concern the enablement of precision medicine through the identification of clinically relevant variants that aid in better prognosis and diagnosis of cancer syndromes and the development of web resources to aid in the interpretation and discovery of such clinically relevant variants. Kaitlin curated information relating to von-Hippel Lindau disease (VHLD), a neoplastic syndrome resulting from the inactivation of the VHL tumor suppressor gene. Her project aided the overall goal of the CIViC project by developing a comprehensive web source of VHL variants. In the future Kaitlin hopes to pursue an MD/PhD in integrative genomics.
Yang-Yang Feng, BSc
Role: Medical Student/MD5
Bio: Yang-Yang is a medical student at Washington University in St. Louis, and conducted a year of research in the Griffith Lab. He completed his undergraduate at Yale University in 2016, where he obtained a B.S. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. Broadly speaking, he is interested in applying mathematical and computational techniques to investigating the fundamental principles of cancer immunology and translating these discoveries into novel immmunotherapies. More specifically, he was involved in a diverse set of projects in the lab, including CIViC, DGIdb, pVACtools, Regtools, and various collaborative clinical efforts.
Sharon Freshour, PhD
Role: Graduate Student
Bio: Sharon completed her PhD in Human and Statistical Genetics in the Griffith lab in 2024. Previously, she graduated from St. Edwards University in Austin, TX in 2016 with a degree in Mathematics.
Felicia Gomez, PhD
Role: Instructor in Medicine
Bio: Dr. Gomez was a postdoc and then Instructor working in collaboration with the Griffith and Fehniger Laboratories at the McDonnell Genome Institute and The Department of Medicine – Division of Oncology. Dr. Gomez led a deep sequencing analysis of Hodgkin lymphoma genomes with the goal of describing somatic events characteristic of this malignancy. Dr. Gomez is now Assistant Professor of Medicine with her own lab at WashU but continues to collaborate with members of the Griffith and Fehniger laboratories, as well was the Washington University Genomics Tumor Board on projects related to the genomics of Hodgkin and Non-Hodgkin lymphomas. Dr. Gomez’s research goals include developing strategies to translate genomic data into improved patient care. She is specifically interested in working toward the inclusion of diverse human populations in translational genomic research. Dr. Gomez also has a leadership role in the Department of Medicine as the co-chair of the Trainee Inclusion and Cultural Awareness Task Force. In this role she works to identify challenges related to diversity and inclusion that Medicine trainees face and the implementation of solutions to these challenges.
Justin Guerra
Role: Lab Assistant/Staff Curator
Bio: Justin Guerra is a math major at University of Texas, San Antonio. Justin joined the lab as part of the Amgen Scholars program.
Jasreet Hundal, PhD
Role: Staff Scientist
Bio: Jasreet completed her PhD in the Human and Statistical Genetics program at Washington University in St. Louis in 2018. She graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology with a Masters in Bioinformatics in 2009, and thereafter worked as a Staff Scientist/Bioinformatician at the McDonnell Genome Institute for about four years, before deciding to join WashU as a PhD student. She gained a lot of experience in comprehensive analysis of large-scale cancer sequencing projects during her work at MGI. Her current graduate research primarily focuses on developing sequence analysis methods for the design of cancer vaccines and personalized immunotherapy regimens. She has been heavily involved in helping design cancer vaccines for a number of clinical trials at Washington University School of Medicine, and has led the team to develop pVACtools/pVACseq – a cancer immunogenomics pipeline for selection and visualization of neoantigens. She is also interested in applying machine learning methods to better predict patient response during immunotherapy trials.
Lynzey Kujan
Role: Lab Assistant/Staff Curator
Bio: Lynzey Kujan was a Staff Curator at the McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University in Saint Louis. She obtained her BS in Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering from Saint Louis University. She was a lead curator for the Clinical Interpretations of Variants in Cancer project (CIViC). She has also contributed to the CyclinE project as well.
Jason Kunisaki, BSc
Role: Data Analyst/Bioinformatician
Bio: Jason was a post-baccalaureate premedical student who recently graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in Genomics and Computational Biology. As an aspiring physician scientist, his research interests lie in the development and application of computational tools to effectively analyze large sequencing datasets. Through this, he is able to identify and characterize novel genomic events as diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers in cancer, which can support improved personalized strategies against the disease. Over the years, he has contributed to several development projects including DoCM, GenVisR, and Regtools. He has also been heavily involved a number of cohort-level investigations spanning several cancer types such as hepatocellular carcinoma (cirrhotic, noncirrhotic, fibrolamellar, and mixed fibrolamellar), adult T-cell leukemia, and osteosarcoma.
Robert Lesurf, PhD
Role: Postdoctoral Researcher
Bio: Dr Lesurf was a Postdoc with Obi Griffith and Elaine Mardis at the McDonnell Genome Institute of Washington University where he led several investigations into the genomic architecture of cancer. In one project, he focused on studying genomic features associated with response to trastuzumab in HER2-positive breast cancer. In a series of other projects, he worked to identify highly validated regulatory sites within the human genome to update the ORegAnno database and design a novel regulome capture reagent. He initiated ongoing studies with this reagent in conjunction with targeted sequencing of TCGA breast cancer samples to identify recurrent alterations in the regulatory regions of the disease. Robert is now a Data Scientist at the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research.
Connor Liu, BSc
Role: Medical Student/MA
Bio: Connor completed his first two years of medical school at Washington University in St. Louis and is currently pursuing a year of research as a Howard Hughes medical fellow. He graduated from Washington University in 2013 where he obtained a B.A. in Biology and Biochemistry. As a medical student, his scientific and clinical interests in oncology led him to join the Griffith lab in 2016 where he has contributed to a number of projects including CIVIC and pVACtools. His current focus is on using bioinformatic strategies to develop personalized treatments for glioblastoma.
Matthew C. Mosior, M.Sc.
Role: Staff Scientist/Bioinformatician
Bio: Matthew was a staff scientist at the McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University in Saint Louis. His undergraduate work was completed at the University of Missouri-Columbia where he obtained a B.Sc. in Biochemistry and the University of Missouri-St. Louis where he obtained a Minor in Mathematics. He performed his graduate work at Saint Louis University where he obtained his M.Sc. in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.
Shahil Pema
Role: Staff Scientist
Bio: Shahil orginally joined the lab for a summer research project as part of the Amgen Scholars program and worked on the CIViC project. Shahil completed his undergraduate degree at University of Nevada and has transitioned to a part time staff position in the lab
Cody Ramirez, BSc
Role: Graduate Student
Bio: Cody completed a PhD candidate in the Human and Statistical Genetics program at Washington University in St. Louis. He graduated from St. Edward’s University in 2014 with a degree in Bioinformatics. He is interested in utilizing patient genomic profiles to study and predict personalized immunotherapy treatments through bioinformatic analysis and machine learning models. His thesis work involved characterizing the genetic landscape and identifying personalized treatment plans in follicular lymphoma.
Avinash Ramu, MSc
Role: Bioinformatician
Bio: Avi was a Bioinformatician at the McDonnell Genome Institute. He made major contributions to the Genome Modeling System, regtools, and others. He is currently a PhD student at Washington University.
Miller Richters
Role: Graduate Student
Bio: Miller Richters completed a PhD in the Griffith Lab in the Molecular Genetics and Genomics program at Washington University in St. Louis. Previously, they graduated from the University of Louisiana at Monroe in 2014 with a B.S. in Biology. They are interested in assessing the impact of intratumoral heterogeneity on neoantigen prediction accuracy as well as exploring novel sources of neoantigens for personalized cancer vaccines.
Lana Sheta
Role: Staff Scientist/Editor
Bio: Lana originally joined the lab for a summer research project as part of the Amgen Scholars program and worked on the CIViC project. Lana completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Nevada and later transitioned to a part time staff position in the lab
Nick Spies, BSc
Role: Medical Student/MA
Bio: Nick is medical resident at Washington University School of Medicine. He graduated from WUSTL in 2014 with a degree in genomics and computational biology. Nick worked in the lab on projects that hope to bridge the gap between research and medicine. These include DGIdb, CIViC, and multiple cancer sequencing projects. He focused on expanding the applications of clinical sequencing, and hopes to continue this work throughout his career.
Lee Trani, BSc
Role: Research Technician
Bio: Lee was a research technician at the McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University in Saint Louis. His primary focus was data quality analysis and manual review of variants for cancer investigations. He was also involved with developing scripts to automate pipelines and procedures for the quality control production group.
Alex Wagner, PhD
Role: Instructor in Medicine
Bio: Dr. Wagner was a postdoc and then an Instructor in the Divison of Oncology at the Washington University School of Medicine and a National Human Genome Research Institute K99 Scholar. His research interests are in facilitating the interpretation of genomic variants in a clinical context. Alex is a leader of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) Variant Representation group, and is co-director of the Variant Interpretation for Cancer Consortium (VICC). He leads development of the VICC meta-knowledgebase and the Drug Gene Interaction Database. Alex is also a primary contributor to other projects centered on interpretations of genomic variants, including the CIViC knowledgebase, the Database of Curated Mutations, and the Genomic Visualizations in R toolkit. He also led the discovery of WNT-signaling activation as a recurrent mechanism of acquired chemoresistance in relapsed Small Cell Lung Cancers.
Jason Walker, BSc, BA, MEng
Role: Biomedical Informatics Project Manager
Bio: Jason Walker was a Biomedical Informatics Project Manager at the McDonnell Genome Institute. He worked with the Griffith Lab to translate grant objectives and analysis goals into well defined development milestones for software engineers to iterate on projects, achieving consistent progress while maintaining best practices in software development methodologies. His responsibilities included overseeing the integration and adaptation of numerous bioinformatics tools for cancer genomics automated analysis of high-throughput DNA and RNA sequence data. In addition to large-scale research projects, he works with a CLIA licensed laboratory on clinical-grade, CAP-accredited analysis workflows for reporting somatic variants in cancer patient genomes.
Alex Wollam
Role: Intern
Bio: Alex is currently pursuing a degree in Computer Science Engineering at the Ohio State University. Alex worked on software development for pVACtools. Alex completed three summer internships with the lab.
Huiming Xia, BSc
Role: Graduate Student
Bio: Huiming completed a PhD in the Griffith Lab in the Computational Molecular Biophysics program at Washington University in St. Louis. Previously, she graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2017 with a dual degree in Computational Biology and Chemistry.
Christopher J. Yoon
Role: Graduate Student
Bio: Chris completed a PhD in the Griffith Lab in the Molecular Genetics and Genomics program and the Medical Scientist Training Program at Washington University in St. Louis. He graduated with a B.S. in Chemical-Biological Engineering from MIT and an M.Phil. degree in computational biology at the University of Cambridge. Before joining the Griffith lab, he spent 3 years at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) to fulfill his military duty as a substituted service for South Korea. Chris' current research interest focuses on understanding various types of human twins using next generation sequencing technologies and developing software tools.