Current members

Sam Modlin

Sam Modlin

Project Scientist

Sam joined LPCDRP in 2015 and received his M.S. in Biological and Medical Informatics in 2017. His graduate research focused on comparative and functional genomics and his thesis focused on elucidating the drivers and sites of variation in DNA methylation patterns of M. tuberculosis clinical isolates. He was subsequently hired on as a Project Scientist in the lab, where he has worked since, supervising graduate students, writing grants, manuscripts, and translating findings into patent-pending inventions. His current research focuses on using long-read DNA sequencing to study M. tuberculosis clinical strain diversity and heterogeneity, with a focus on DNA methylation and large sequence polymorphisms that influence clinical bacterial phenotypes

Derek Conkle-Gutierrez

Derek Conkle-Gutierrez

Graduate research assistant - P.H.D student

Derek joined the LPCDRP lab in 2017 when entering the SDSU Bioinformatics and Medical Informatics Masters program (graduated in 2019). He is currently in the Public Health Joint Doctoral Program at SDSU and UCSD, under the mentorship of Dr. Valafar. Derek studies drug resistance and diversifying mechanisms of M. tuberculosis using long and short read DNA sequencing data. These mechanisms include heterogeneous loss of function mutations, gene conversion, and DNA methylation.

:Graduate Student

Afif Elghraoui

Afif Elghraoui

Graduate research assistant - P.H.D candidate
Nachiket Thosar

Nachiket Thosar

Graduate research assistant - Master's

Nachiket joined the LPCDRP lab in August 2020 while being enrolled at SDSU in Bioinformatics and Medical Informatics Masters program. Currently working in the lab on drug resistance mechanisms, genomic diversity and whole genome sequencing of Mtb.

Theron James

Theron James

Graduate research assistant - Master's
Bria Gorman

Bria Gorman

Graduate research assistant - Master's
Maryam Ahmadi Jeshvaghane

Maryam Ahmadi Jeshvaghane

Graduate research assistant - Master's

Maryam received her bachelor’s degree in Industrial and management engineering with a minor in statistics in 2019. She is currently studying her master’s degree in Big Data Analytics program at SDSU. She has been a member of the lab since April 2021 and her current research involves applying machine learning methodologies to find the reasons behind anomalous DNA methylation pattern in mycobacterium tuberculosis.

mahmadijeshvag6700@sdsu.edu:

Tristan Jang

Tristan Jang

Graduate research assistant - Master's
Reina Hastings

Reina Hastings

Undergraduate research assistant

Reina joined the LPCDRP lab in 2023 while working on her B.S. in Cellular and Molecular Biology with minors in chemistry and computer science. Before joining Dr. Faramarz’s lab, she was a research assistant in an Alzheimer’s research wet lab under the San Diego State Research Foundation. Since becoming a part of the LPCDRP, she is focused on developing her dry lab and programming skills.

Mahshid Fallahpour

Mahshid Fallahpour

Graduate research assistant - P.H.D student

Mahshid joined LPCDRP in 2023 and received her M.S. in Medical Biotechnology in 2017. Her graduate research focused on comparative and functional genomics and her thesis focused on developing a Recombinant Antibodies Array for the simultaneous detection of multiple antigens in human sera specifically HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis. Mahshid has just started her graduate studies as a Ph.D. student in public Health, Global Health and she is one of the wet lab members.

Alumni 

Anu Amallraja

Anu Amallraja

Amy Goodmanson

Amy Goodmanson

Seema Patel

Seema Patel

Calvin Kim

Calvin Kim

Emma Westin

Emma Westin

Logan Fink

Logan Fink

Matt Onorato

Matt Onorato

Alyssa Zlotnicki

Alyssa Zlotnicki

Cody Price

Cody Price

Christopher Morrissey

Christopher Morrissey

Scott Mitchell

Scott Mitchell

Deepika Gunasekaran

Deepika Gunasekaran

Sarah Ramirez-Busby

Sarah Ramirez-Busby

Cassidy Robinhold

Cassidy Robinhold

Danny Oh

Danny Oh

Alexa Barnes

Alexa Barnes

Emma Bishop

Emma Bishop

Ragavi Shamugan

Ragavi Shamugan

Monica Espinoza

Monica Espinoza

Postdoc research fellow
Anna Scavo

Anna Scavo

Graduate research assistant - Master's
Anastassia Frenzel

Anastassia Frenzel

Undergraduate research assistant
Nicholas Middelberg

Nicholas Middelberg

Undergraduate research assistant
Ashley Swing

Ashley Swing

Graduate research assistant - P.H.D student