Our People

Doctoral Student

Mick is a PhD student in the Department of Physics. He graduated from the University of Florida with a B.S. in physics. At the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Columbia, Mick worked on precision measurement experiments in both gravitational astrophysics and atomic, molecular, and optical physics. Now in the Rabadan lab, Mick uses a computational approach to understand and harness the immune system in the context of viruses and cancers.

✉️ mpa2143[at]columbia.edu

Doctoral Student

Xi received his B.S. in Cell and Molecular Biology and M.Phil in Computer Science from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2016 and 2019, respectively. During his M.Phil study in Dr. Kevin Yip's group, he developed a framework for analyzing noncoding regulatory variants using whole-genome sequencing data and applied it to study the etiology of Hirschsrpung's disease. His research interest is about the system biology and genomics problems in human diseases. Xi is currently a PhD student at Department of Biomedical Informatics in Columbia University. In the Rabadan Lab, he works on methods and analysis of the noncoding regulatory variants in B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia and glioma.

✉️ xf2217[at]cumc.columbia.edu

Doctoral Student

Jean-Baptiste received a B.S. in biology and an M.S. in computer science at the University of Chicago. He then worked as a data analyst in the Olopade Lab, studying the tumor microenvironment in breast cancer patients of African ancestry. Jean-Baptiste is currently a PhD student in the Department of Biomedical Informatics. He is interested in developing new computational tools in genomics, especially in the fields of cancer research and immunology.

✉️ jfr2137[at]cumc.columbia.edu

Doctoral Student

Jiayu Su is a PhD student in the Department of Systems Biology and is jointly supervised by David Knowles. Prior to Columbia, he received his BS in Biology and BS in Applied Mathematics from Peking University in 2020, where he explored statistical methods for single-cell genomics and multi-omics data. Currently, Jiayu is interested in the functional impact and regulation of alternative splicing in cancer, and is always enthusiastic to develop new computational tools for genomic advances such as spatial omics.

✉️ js5756[at]cumc.columbia.edu

Doctoral Student

Vinay is a PhD student in the Biomedical Informatics department at the Columbia University Medical Center. He received his B.S. in Biochemistry from UCLA in 2018. After college he worked at the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Maryland developing methods for integrating single cell RNA-seq from multiple studies and developing webapps for visualizing transcriptomic data. He is interested in protein machine learning methods and their applications in human health and disease.

✉️ vss2134[at]cumc.columbia.edu

Rotation PhD Student

Tianji Yu is a PhD student in the department of Systems Biology. Before he came to Columbia, he earned a bachelor's degree from UNC Chapel Hill where he studied quantitative biology and computer science. At UNC, he explored bioinformatic tools for single-cell RNA data. Currently, his research interest lies in characterizing TF-TF interactions in cancer with machine learning models.

✉️ ty2514[at]cumc.columbia.edu

Associate Research Scientist

Luis Aparicio is an Associate Reserach Scientist in Columbia University's Systems Biology department. He did his graduate degree in Physics combined with studies in Mathematics at Universidad Autonoma in Madrid and Music at the Madrid Conservatory specializing in ancient music. He received his M.Sc. and PhD in Theoretical Physics at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Madrid. He did his first postdoctoral research at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics working at the interface between String Theory, Particle Physics and Cosmology. His current research interest is focused on developing mathematical methods to address problems in Systems Biology, in particular the role that Random Matrix Theory plays in the context of single-cell and cancer genomics.

✉️ la2666[at]cumc.columbia.edu

Associate Research Scientist

Anqi Wang is an Associate Research Scientist in the department of Systems Biology. He received his PhD degree at the Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has experience in various areas of computational biology research, including sequence alignment, genome assembly for short sequencing reads (Illumina), error correction, isoform identification and modification detection for long sequencing reads (PacBio and ONT). Anqi is focusing on data analysis and method development for high-throughput sequencing data.

✉️ aw3291[at]cumc.columbia.edu

Post-Doctoral Researcher

María del Mar is a Computational Biologist specializing in Integrative Cancer Research. She completed her undergraduate studies in Biology and earned a master’s degree in Biotechnology (UGR, Spain), followed by an international PhD in Health and Wellness Technologies (UPV, Spain).

Currently, she is investigating the functional impact of germline variants in gliomas and acute myeloid leukemia with the ultimate goal of estimating cancer risk and elucidating the mechanisms behind non-coding mutations. Her scientific interests encompass a dual focus, spanning from the fundamental exploration of complex tumor nature at the molecular level to the clinical translation aimed at selecting optimal treatments for patients, with particular emphasis on immunotherapies.

To achieve this, she aims to integrate diverse biomedical data using advanced computational tools to comprehend cancer dynamics and enhance treatment selection.

✉️ ma4255[at]cumc.columbia.edu

Post-Doctoral Researcher

Ziwei Chen is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist in the department of Systems Biology. She received her PhD degree at the Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her research interests focus on data analysis and method development for complex data in biological systems, especially related to high-throughput single-cell sequencing data.

✉️ zc2703[at]cumc.columbia.edu

Post-Doctoral Researcher

Seung-won Choi is a postdoctoral research scientist in the Rabadan Lab and an MD/PhD with a specialty in Neurosurgery. She received her MD from the Ewha Womans University College of Medicine, her MS in Medicine from Ulsan University College of Medicine, and her PhD in Health Science and Technology from Sungkyunkwan University. Her research interests are data-driven precision oncology and neuro-oncology clinical trials. Her current project involves unraveling genome-phenotype association in glioma patients using multi-omics data including genomics and radiomics.

✉️ sc5006[at]cumc.columbia.edu

Post-Doctoral Researcher

Jun Hou Fung is a postdoctoral research scientist in the Department of Systems Biology. He obtained his PhD in Mathematics from Harvard University, where he specialized in algebraic topology and homotopy theory. Currently, he is interested in studying hematopoietic stem cells and their response to various perturbations as well as the molecular biomarkers of aging using multimodal bulk and single cell measurements. Jun Hou is also developing ideas from topological and geometric data analysis into general-purpose data analysis tools. Previously, he has worked on elucidating the genetics and structure of the C. elegans nervous system.

✉️ jf3380[at]cumc.columbia.edu

Post-Doctoral Researcher

Yoonhee Nam is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist in the Department of Systems Biology at Columbia University. She received her PhD degree at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where she focused on identification and prioritization of somatic and germline mutations in brain vascular diseases. Her current interest is mutational signatures in cancers.

✉️ yn2427[at]cumc.columbia.edu

Post-Doctoral Researcher

Jianhua Wang is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist in the Department of Systems Biology. She received her PhD in Microbiology from Nanjing Normal University, where she was fascinated with Paleovirology and studied the origin, diversity and evolution of reverse-transcribing viruses. Currently, her research interests focus on the interaction between viruses and cancers.

✉️ jw4562[at]cumc.columbia.edu

Joint Post-Doctoral Researcher

Yi earned his MD degree from Wenzhou Medical University, China in 2014. During his PhD, he joined the laboratory of Dr. Felix Haglund at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, where he identifying genetic and molecular mechanisms of sarcoma using multi-omics data analysis. Yi graduated in March 2022 and then joined Dr. Aaron Viny's laboratory to start postdoctoral training at Columbia Stem Cell Initiative. His current research project focuses on the application of existing and novel bioinformatics analysis methods to determine the role of chromatin structural changes in the development of normal and malignant bone marrow function and differentiation of cellular blood components.

✉️ yc4229[at]cumc.columbia.edu

Undergraduate Student

Tommy Ly is a computer science student at Columbia University, where he is pursuing his second bachelor's degree. Prior to his studies, Tommy spent 4.5 years working at Uber Technologies in diverse data analytics roles across Asia and America. In 2022, he interned at the New York Genome Center, where he worked on image processing for the Illumina HiSeq package. Tommy's passion lies in the application of machine learning to the healthcare and bio fields.

✉️ tommy.ly[at]columbia.edu

Undergraduate Student

Sanjay Natesan is a Junior (Class of 2025) at Columbia University pursuing a degree in Computer Science. During high school, he spent two years working on the statistical modeling of infectious diseases in the Han Lab at the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies. He also participated in the Rockefeller University Summer Science Research Program for two summers where he examined RNA gene expression in COVID-19 patients and identified patterns in infection and vaccination among various United States demographics. Sanjay joined the Rabadan Lab in Fall 2021 as an undergraduate student researcher; his interests include Data Science, AI/ML, and computational biology.

✉️ sn2967[at]columbia.edu

Undergraduate Intern

Theodore Nelson is a senior in Columbia College, majoring in Computer Science, pursuing a premedical track. On campus, he serves as the President of Systems Biology Initiative, an undergraduate student organization organized around this crucial intersection between bioinformatics and medicine. His previous research has focused on long-read transcriptomics. In the Rabadan Lab, he is working to model alternative splicing in human diseases within spatial transcriptomics data.

✉️ tmn2126[at]columbia.edu

Administrative Assistant

Stephanie DeJesus is the Administrative Assistant for Dr. Raul Rabadan and the Rabadan Lab within the Department of Systems Biology. She studied Communications at Suffolk County Community College and has continued her education through UCLA and the School of Visual Arts in New York. After working with Apple for just over a decade, Stephanie joined Dr. Rabadan’s group in January 2023.

✉️ sd3671[at]cumc.columbia.edu

Computational Research Manager

Alejandro Buendia is a Computational Research Manager in the Department of Systems Biology. He received his BA in computer science and mathematics from Columbia University. He previously worked as a data scientist at Microsoft and a research engineer in the Clinical Machine Learning group at MIT, where he worked on modeling patient trajectories from longitudinal EHR data. He is currently interested in using techniques from natural language processing to model viral evolution and representation learning over single-cell transcriptomic data.

✉️ alb2281[at]columbia.edu