Charles Danko
Associate Professor
Charles is an assistant professor at the Baker Institute and the College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University. His research is focused on understanding gene regulation using methods from molecular biology and genetics, computer science, statistics, and machine learning. Learn about active research projects in the Research page.
@charlesdanko@genomic.social
@charlesdanko
Ed Rice
Laboratory Manager
Ed is a professional laboratory manager, with over 20 years of molecular biology experience. As the lead bench scientist, Ed has his hands in virtually every project in the Danko lab. He has a particular scientific interest in understanding the molecular pathways underlying autoimmune disorders.
Gilad Barshad
Postdoctroal Associate
Gilad received his PhD from Ben Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel in 2019. During his PhD Gilad studied the mitochondrial-nuclear co-regulation of gene expression. Looking through an evolutionary lens, Gilad now hopes to shed new light on the relationship between genomic architecture and transcriptional regulation.
Blaine Harlan
Postdoctroal Associate
Blaine earned her PhD from Cornell University performing scATAC-seq data collection, analysis, and technology development. Blaine's interest is currently in tech development of single cell genomic assays and applications in cancer and germ cell development.
Jyoti Lama
Postdoctroal Associate
Jyoti completed her PhD from University of Houston studying host tolerance to transposable elements. Jyoti's focus in the Danko and Cohen labs is to understand how changes in transcription and chromatin influence germ cell development.
Jon Villanueva
Biomedical and Biological Sciences Graduate Student
Jonathan Villanueva is a graduate student in the Biomedical and Biological Sciences program at Cornell. He is interested in utilizing dry and wet lab techniques to identify how specific mutational combinations alter the gene regulatory mechanisms (enhancers and miRNAs) that drive colon cancer development.
Alexandra Chivu
GG&D Graduate Student
Alex worked at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) & Medical Research Council (MRC), London studying transcription bursts and epigenetic regulation in cancer and immunity. Currently Alex is interested in understanding the impact of chromatin architecture on transcriptional regulation, as well as developing new RNA-based technologies.
Adam He
Computational Biology Graduate Student
Adam is a graduate student in the Computational Biology program at Cornell. He is interested in both the application of machine learning methods to understanding transcriptional regulation and, more broadly, the role that transcriptional regulators play in development and evolution.
Zhong Wang
Programer, Research Associate
Zhong Wang arrived at Cornell University with 6 years of experience in Statistical Genetics and Biostatistics. He conducted postdoctoral training at Penn State College of Medicine and Yale School of Public Health, where he worked in the areas of statistical modeling and software development.
Current position: Professor, Dalian University of Technology, China
Danko lab publications.
Tinyi Chu
Croucher Foundation Graduate Fellow
Tinyi is a graduate student in the Computational Biology program at Cornell and a scholar of the Croucher Foundation. He is actively working on developing bioinformatic tools for analyzing PRO-seq data, and is broadly interested in understanding how the rewiring of transcriptional regulatory networks plays a role in oncogenesis.
Current position: Postdoc (Dana Pe'er), Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York
Danko lab publications.
Mridusmita Saikia
Postdoctroal Associate
A biochemist by training, Mridu received her PhD from University of Chicago in 2009, where she studied the role of posttranscriptional modifications present in cellular RNA. During her postdoctoral training she continued to study the non-coding RNAs, and their function in gene expression control, especially in the context of human diseases. Mridu is now making her debut into single cell genomics, her goal is to establish a single cell RNA sequencing technology, and adapt that technology to study canine immune cells.
Current position: Lecturer, Biomedical Engineering, Cornell UniversityDanko lab publications.
Lauren Choate
GG&D Graduate Student
Lauren is a graduate student in the Genetics, Genomics, and Development program at Cornell. She is interested in understanding the role of disease risk alleles on transcriptional regulation in autoimmunity using computational and wet lab techniques.
Current position: Mayo Clinic Laboratory Genetics and Genomics FellowDanko lab publications.
Paul Munn
Computational Biology Graduate Student
Paul is a graduate student in the Computational Biology program at Cornell. He is interested in both developing machine learning techniques to aid in the identification of transcription unit boundaries, and in improving our understanding of chromatin structure and how it affects gene regulation.
Current position: Computational Biologist, TREx core, Cornell UniversityDanko lab publications.
James Lewis
Postdoctroal Associate
James received his postdoc from Bob Reed at Cornell. James is interested in understanding the molecular basis of evolutionary adaptation, especially for traits driven by cis-regulatory changes.
Current position: Assistant Professor, Clemson UniversityDanko lab publications.
Shao-Pei Chou
GG&D Graduate Student
Shao-Pei is a graduate student in the Genetics, Genomics, and Development program at Cornell. She likes to develop new computational methods that can better tackle the problems and provide a different perspectives to examine the biological data. Here is a method she developed recently: AlleleHMM. Her current project is to identify genomic factors that play a role in transcription regulation using allele-specific analysis.
Current position: Computational Biologist, Ginkgo BioworksDanko lab publications.
Adriana Alexander
Biomedical and Biological Sciences Graduate Student
Adriana is a graduate student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program at Cornell. She is interested in understanding the mechanisms controlling transcriptional inactivation during spermatogenesis using a combination of wet lab and computational tools.
Current position: Postdoctoral Associate (Humphrey Yao), NIHDanko lab publications.
