Team

Associate Professor of Biology
manu.manu@und.edu
Research Interests: development, cell-fate choice, gene regulation/epigenetics, gene regulatory networks, mathematical modeling, machine learning.

Research Assistant Professor
sunil.nooti@und.edu
Research Interests: An adult human has about 37 trillion cells of which 90% (30 trillion) are hematopoietic and are renewed at the rate of 500 billion cells per day. Each cell has a genetic blueprint of 3 billion base pairs, of which less than 2% code for about 21000 genes that produce 400 different cell types and apparently everything that we were, are and will be. With 100 billion neurons and their 500 trillion synapses, we have about 6000 thoughts a day. And my goal for the last 15 years has been to have as many of those as possible focused to answer how some things regulate some or many other things. Currently, some of those things are R, PUER cells, cell fate, cell cycle, FUCCI, MPRAs, etc.

PhD Student
trevor.long@und.edu
Trevor is interested in understanding gene regulation/epigenetics during cell-fate choice. He is exploring functional genomics techniques such as ATAC-Seq and Hi-C and is especially interested in increasing their genomic resolution through capture technologies.

PhD Student
n.samarawickrama@und.edu
I’m a fourth year graduate student in Department of Physics and Astrophysics with Dr. Yen Lee Loh as my dissertation advisor. We are collaborating with the Manu lab to leverage physics concepts and machine learning algorithms to derive insights from biological and genetic datasets. Currently, I’m doing two projects, inferring hematopoietic gene regulatory networks using gene circuit models to study cell-fate choice and identifying temporal patterns in genome-wide gene expression dataset by applying machine learning techniques.

Undergraduate Research Assistant
baylee.schlothauer@und.edu
BayLee is interested in gene regulation. She is studying how enhancers influence genes associated with myeloid differentiation. She and Rylie are working to create genetically engineered cell lines in which certain enhancers have been deleted to measure their effect on transcription.

Undergraduate Research Assistant
rylie.fode@und.edu
I am a fourth-year undergraduate majoring in biology. My project is focused on analyzing the functional interactions between two cis-regulatory modules within the Cebpa gene, CRM7 and CRM 18, using the CRISPR-Cas9 system. This project is being done in collaboration with my fellow undergraduate student BayLee Schlothauer.
Alumni

Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Research Interests: Epigenetics and gene regulation during development, non-additive control of gene expression by multiple enhancers, genome editing.
Currently a postdoctoral fellow at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI.

PhD Candidate
Joanna used mathematical models to simulate cellular differentiation during hematopoiesis. She is interested in Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, and Data Analysis.
Currently a postdoctoral fellow at NYU Langone, New York, NY.

Undergraduate Research Assistant
Received a PhD from the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN and working as a Computational Bioinformatics Analyst at Sanford Health.

Undergraduate Research Assistant
Brayden worked on genome engineering using CRISPR/Cas9 and Cre-Lox.
Currently pursuing an MD at the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Grand Forks, ND.

Technician
Research Interests: genome engineering, non-additive control of gene expression by multiple enhancers.
Currently working for Arkos Health in Fargo, ND.

Undergraduate Research Assistant
Currently pursuing an MD at the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Grand Forks, ND.

Undergraduate Research Assistant
Currently pursuing a PhD in theoretical condensed matter physics at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA.

Undergraduate Research Assistant
Currently working at Merieux NutriSciences.

Undergraduate Research Assistant
Research Interests: cloning, Gibson Assembly.
Currently working at ispot.tv.

Undergraduate Research Assistant
Rocky worked as an undergraduate research assistant on bioinformatics and the analysis of functional genomics data.