Team | Center for Human Brain Variation

Center leadership

Steve McCarroll, PhD

smccarro@broadinstitute.org

Steve is an institute member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and director of genomic neurobiology for the Broad’s Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research. He is also Dorothy and Milton Flier Professor ...

Evan Macosko, MD, PhD

emacosko@broadinstitute.org

Evan is an institute member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he directs a lab in the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research. He is also an associate professor and attending psychiatrist ...

Kiku Ichihara, MBA

kichihar@broadinstitute.org

Kiku is the Managing Director of the Center for Human Brain Variation and the Director of Research Strategy & Operations in the McCarroll Lab. She works closely with the Center Directors on overall ...

Paola Arlotta, PhD

arlotta@broadinstitute.org

Paola is a professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard University, and chair of the HSCRB department. She is a principal faculty member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and a member ...

Mehrtash Babadi, PhD

mehrtash@broadinstitute.org

Mehrtash is the Director of Computational Methods at the Data Sciences Platform (DSP), Broad Institute. His group develops probabilistic machine learning methods and cloud-native software products for ...

Randy Buckner, PhD

randy_buckner@harvard.edu

Randy is the Sosland Family Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Harvard University and affiliated with the Center for Brain Science. He is also Professor at the Harvard Medical School and ...

Fei Chen, PhD

chenf@broadinstitute.org

Fei is a Core Faculty member at the Broad Institute and assistant professor at Harvard Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. He obtained his Ph.D. in biological engineering from the Massachusetts Institute ...

Elise Robinson, ScD, MPH

erob@broadinstitute.org

Elise is an Assistant Professor in the Center for Genomic Medicine and Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She ...

Charles Vanderburg, PhD

cvanderb@broadinstitute.org

Charles (Chuck) Vanderburg is a senior scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He develops methods to enable single nucleus and spatial analyses of micro-scale histopathological regions ...

Joshua Welch, PhD

welchjd@umiich.edu

Josh is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan. He did graduate training at the University of North Carolina and postdoctoral research at the Broad Institute. A computer scientist by ...

Rossini Fernandez, MBA

fero@broadinstitute.org

Rossini is a Senior Administrative Assistant of the Center for Human Brain Variation project at the Broad. Before joining the broad, she held many administrative positions ranging from Manager of an ...

Emily Finn

finnemil@broadinstitute.org

Emily is a Project Coordinator for the Center for Human Brain Variation focused on advancing various project components for BICAN. Prior to joining the Broad team, Emily managed multiple projects in ...

Katelyn Flowers

kflowers@broadinstitute.org

Katelyn is a Project Manager in the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research. As the project manager for the Macosko lab, she has worked on various brain sequencing projects including BICCN grants: ...

Marina Hogan

mhogan@broadinstitute.org

Marina is a Project Manager for the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research and supports Steve McCarroll’s lab. She has worked on various human genetic variation projects to better understand ...

Curtis Mello

curtis_mello@hms.harvard.edu

Curtis is the Lab Manager and a Research Assistant in the McCarroll lab at HMS, and will be joining the BICAN project as Manager of Lab Operations. In the McCarroll lab, he helped optimize "village ...

Sabrin Mohamednur

smohamed@broadinstitute.org

Sabrin is the Scientific Outreach Coordinator of the Center for Human Brain Variation project. As the coordinator she will oversee the implementation of the plans to enhance diverse perspectives as ...

Alex Werley, MS

awerley@broadinstitute.org

Alex is the Operations Lead, Center for Human Brain Variation at Broad Institute, overseeing financial and grants management for this project. She has a Master of Science in nonprofit management. ...

Steve Burger, PhD

sburger@broadinstitute.org

Steve is a Computational Scientist in the McCarroll Lab. In graduate school, he studied X-inactivation mosaicism and the effects of X-linked mutations in the human brain. His research interests ...

Bennett Ferris, PhD

ferris@broadinstitute.org

Bennett is a Computational Scientist in the Macosko Lab. He is interested in using the tools of bioinformatics and machine learning to shed light on the etiology of neurodegenerative diseases. Prior ...

Stephen Fleming, PhD, MPhil

sfleming@broadinstitute.org

Stephen is a Machine Learning Scientist II in the Methods Group of the Data Sciences Platform at the Broad Institute. He works on developing analytical methods and machine learning models for single ...

Haley Fritch, PhD

fritch@broadinstitute.org

Haley joined the McCarroll Lab as a computational scientist in May 2023. She received a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from Boston College and a BS in psychobiology from UCLA. Prior to joining the ...

Giulio Genovese, PhD

giulio@broadinstitute.org

Giulio is a mathematician by training. His main area of expertise is in models to detect mosaic chromosomal alterations. Giulio has experience in computer languages and statistical languages such as ...

Aleks Goeva, PhD

agoeva@broadinstitute.org

Aleks is a postdoctoral fellow in the Macosko lab since June 2017. She holds a BS in Applied Mathematics from Sofia University and an MS and a PhD in Statistics from Boston University.

Melissa Goldman

mgoldman@broadinstitute.org

Melissa is a data analytics manager in the McCarroll lab. She developed Drop-seq with Evan Macosko, and worked at the bench for over 8 years specializing in single-cell technologies. She now works ...

Seva Kashin

skashin@broadinstitute.org

Seva is a software engineer in Steven McCarroll's lab and has worked on various copy number variation and single cell analysis projects. He's very excited by neuroscience, literature and history.

Jonah Langlieb

jlanglie@broadinstitute.org

Jonah is a Senior Computational Associate in the Macosko Lab. His research focuses on developing and applying methods to analyze large-scale single-cell datasets and is excited to work with all this ...

James Nemesh

nemesh@broadinstitute.org

Jim is a Principal Software Engineer at the Broad Institute and a McCarroll Lab member. Jim develops new methods to analyze scRNASeq data and assists in workflow/QC design of scRNASeq datasets for ...

Mukund Raj

mraj@broadinstitute.org

Mukund is a Senior Software Engineer in the Macosko Lab. He enjoys building interactive, visual analytic web portals, as well as developing visualizations for large, geometric, or high-dimensional ...

Nicole Rockweiler, PhD

nrockwei@broadinstitute.org

Nicole is a postdoctoral associate in Steven McCarroll's lab and is interested in understanding the causes and consequences of mosaicism in health and disease. Nicole received her PhD in ...

Matthew Shabet

mshabet@broadinstitute.org

Matthew is an associate computational biologist working in the Macosko Lab. He is currently studying the epigenetic characteristics of neuronal cell types vulnerable to degeneration in Parkinson’s ...

Khalid Shakir, MS

kshakir@broadinstitute.org

Khalid is a software engineer who uses his expertise to scale scientific analyses. During his time at the Broad Institute he contributed to projects including the 1000 Genomes Project and the ...

Jonah Silverman

jsilverm@broadinstitute.org

Jonah is an Associate Computational Biologist in the Macosko Lab. His work focuses on the application and development of computational methods for the processing and analysis of single-cell datasets.

Alec Wysoker

alecw@broadinstitute.org

Alec is a software engineer who develops tools to analyze genomic and transcriptomic data.

Olivia Yoo

yooolivi@broadinstitute.org

Olivia is a Computational Associate in the McCarroll lab analyzing the quality and content of the single-cell sequencing data. Prior to joining the Broad, she studied computational neuroscience and ...

Karol Balderrama

kbalderr@broadinstitute.org

Karol is a research associate at Macosko and Chen labs. She graduated for The University of Texas at El Paso with a Microbiology major. She works in optimizing and applying a spatial transcriptomic ...

CJ Crombie

ccrombie@broadinstitute.org

CJ is an undergraduate co-op student working as a Research Assistant on the BICAN project. CJ is deeply passionate about her studies in Cell and Molecular Biology at Northeastern University! ...

Sadie Drouin

drouin@broadinstitute.org

Sadie is a Research Associate I for the McCarroll & Macosko BICAN project. She is a recent graduate from Wheaton College MA with a B.S. in Neuroscience on the Pre-Medical Track. Prior to joining the ...

Kathleen Kim

kimkathl@broadinstitute.org

Kathleen is a Research Associate I working on the BICAN project for the McCarroll & Macosko labs and studying X-linked Dystonia Parkinsonism. Prior to joining the Broad, she researched ...

Vipin Kumar, PhD

vkumar@broadinstitute.org

Vipin is a nucleic acid chemist working on developing oligonucleotides for spatial transcriptomic technology. In addition, he also works on developing artificial oligonucleotides and their application ...

Lauren Macaisa

macaisa@broadinstitute.org

Lauren is a Research Associate II focused on organizing and optimizing wet lab protocols for the McCarroll & Macosko BICAN lab efforts. Prior to working at the Broad, Lauren worked at Moffitt Cancer ...

Giovanni Marrero

gmarrero@broadinstitute.org

Giovanni is a Research Associate III and the Lab Manager for the Chen Lab. After graduating from Syracuse University with a BS in Biotechnology, he studied immunology at the University of Pittsburgh ...

Naeem Nadaf, BDS

nnadaf@broadinstitute.org

Naeem is an International dentist from India working as Research Scientist 1 in the Macosko lab. Naeem is working on snRNA seq experiments and he has created and optimized various snRNA seq and ...

Nirmala Rayan, PhD

narulray@broadinstitute.org

Nirmala is a Senior Scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she specializes in studying the cellular correlates of inter-individual brain variation. As part of the BICAN team, she ...

Liv Spina

liv_spina@hms.harvard.edu

Liv is an Associate Research and Operational Assistant in the McCarroll Lab. She runs nuclei isolation protocols for single-cell sequencing and assists in lab management tasks, such as setting up the ...

Nafiseh Yavari, PhD

nyavari@broadinstitute.org

Nafiseh is a Research Scientist at Broad Institute. Her research focus has been on optimizing the Single Cell Multiome ATAC + Gene Expression to human brain tissues, particularly midbrain subregions ...