Our Team
-

Alison Taylor, PhD - Prinicipal Investigator
Email: at3488[@]cumc.columbia.edu
Twitter: @alisontaylorlab
Alison is an Assistant Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology in the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center.
-

Joan Castellano Perez, PhD - Postdoctoral Fellow
Email: jc5577[@]cumc.columbia.edu
Joan’s research focuses on how aneuploidy affects differentiation in lung cells.
-

Zeinab Amini-Farsani, PhD - Postdoctoral Fellow
Email: za2330[@]cumc.columbia.edu
-

Hunter Herriage, PhD - Postdoctoral Fellow
Email: hch2148[@]cumc.columbia.edu
Hunter's research focuses on how aneuploidy affects nuclear structure, DNA damage response, and stem cell differentiation.
-
Samyukta Mallick, PhD
Email: sm4922[@]cumc.columbia.edu
Samyukta is interested in squamous cancers, including the interaction between HPV and aneuploidy. Samyukta completed her PhD at Columbia University in 2026.
-

Joanna Modi - PhD Candidate, Pathobiology Program
Email: jnk2143[@]cumc.columbia.edu
Joanna’s research project looks at how individual gene dosage plays a role in aneuploidy phenotypes, and how genetic ancestry correlates with specific aneuploidy events.
-

Karissa Shuck - PhD Candidate, Integrated Program
Email: kls2250[@]cumc.columbia.edu
Karissa is investigating consequences of chromosome aneuploidies in DNA replication and differentiation.
-

Laura Rodriguez-Bonilla - PhD Candidate, Integrated Program
Email: lr3178[@]cumc.columbia.edu
Laura is investigating how aneuploidy modulates immune signaling pathways and tumor–immune dynamics in cancer.
-

Kristine Nguyen - Program Coordinator
Email: kn2700[@] cumc.columbia.edu
Kristine supports the lab’s operations by managing administrative processes, coordinating day-to-day operations as well as long-term administrative needs.
-

Rohan Munoth - Staff Associate
Email: rm4294[@]cumc.columbia.edu
Rohan builds and maintains scalable bioinformatics pipelines to analyse whole-genome, transcriptomic, and single-cell sequencing data for cancer research. He focuses on using cloud platforms such as AWS to create reproducible, efficient workflows for large-scale genomic analyses.
-

Sai Ramani Choudari - Lab Tech
Email: sc5148[@]cumc.columbia.edu
Sai is working with Samyukta focusing on the interaction between HPV and aneuploidy. Sai supports the lab’s daily operations.
-

Gayatri Bulsara - Undergraduate Student, Barnard College
Email: gb2861[@] barnard.edu
Gayatri works with Joanna investigating the effects of vhl haploinsufficiency in lung and kidney cells.
-

Surya Saraf - Undergraduate Student, Barnard College
sss2350[@]barnard.edu
Taylor Lab Alumni
Nadja Zhakula-Kostadinova - PhD candidate 2022-2026, now working in industry
Chloe Paolucci - research technician 2023-2025, now PhD student at Columbia University
Sejal Jain, MD - USF Medical Student 2020-2024, now resident at Seattle Children's Hospital
Andrew Petti - undergraduate student 2020-2022, research technician 2022-2023, now MD/PhD student @ UMass Chen Medical School
Yohanna Georgis - research technician 2020-2022, now Project Owner @ S&P Global
Laura Byron - research technician 2020-2022, now PhD student at Rutgers University
Nikhita Damaraju - masters student 2021-2022, now PhD student at the University of Washington
Undergraduate Alumni
Madeline Raquel Saavedra Bagdonas
Amber Arif
Sara Chough
Matthew Wahl
Alexandria Yao
Amit Regev
Valeria Cossich Galicia