Research Assistants
Our Division has a strong track record of training students and young researchers. Many alumni have gone on to graduate school, medical school, and to industry labs.
Papa Anderson, B.A.
Papa currently works in the Schmaier Lab studying the role of the endothelial cell membrane as a primary source of procoagulant phospholipids in forming thrombi on the endothelial cell surface. He graduated from Williams College with honors in Chemistry and a concentration in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology. At college, he studied the Bulk Fusion of Sendai Virus (a virus in the paramyxoviridae family which includes the more commonly known measles and mumps) to liposomes, work he presented at the New England Science Symposium and the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting, and wrote on in his honors thesis. Papa is interested in how medical research (science and education in general) can advance healthcare in developing countries.
Lindsay Collier, B.S.
Lindsay is a Research Assistant in the Bendapudi lab studying the mechanisms of the contact-dependent coagulation pathway. Born and raised in Houston, she attended the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned a B.S. in Cellular and Molecular Biology with a minor in Applied Statistical Modeling. While at UT, she completed an undergraduate research project exploring the applications of bacterial genetic engineering to optimize chemical-detection bioassays. She previously interned at Asuragen, Inc. to conduct research for their molecular diagnostics division.
Marissa Droutman, B.S.
Marissa Droutman currently works in the Schulman Lab for Dr. Sol Schulman as a research assistant studying the role of tissue factor in hemostasis and thrombosis. She graduated from Rivier University with a B.S. in Biology, in Nashua, New Hampshire where she still currently lives. During college, she studied abroad at Beijing University in China focusing on biotechnology, and also studied biodiversity at the University of Georgia in Costa Rica. Now she is mostly working with the mice used for experiments, making sure they are healthy and happy, setting up any breeding crosses needed, genotyping and weaning litters, and ordering animals, as well as different experiments such as isolating macrophages from the peritoneal cavity, isolating bone marrow cells, and harvesting organs.
Matthew Serrata, B.S.
Matthew is a Research Assistant in the Bendapudi lab. Originally from California, he attended Boston College where he earned his B.S. in Biochemistry. He has previously held technician positions at Tufts Medical Center and Amgen Inc. His current project involves the study of the contact-dependent coagulation pathway as it pertains to thrombogenesis.
Alumni Research Assistants
Alexandra Barr, B.S.
Alex was a Research Assistant in the Zwicker lab working with Dr. Anish Sharda on projects on Von Willebrand disease and other blood disorders. Alex attended Brandeis University where she earned her B.S. in Biology and B.A. in Environmental Studies. She attended graduate school at UMass Amherst where she studied the evolution of chemical defenses in tomatoes.
Sharjeel A. Chaudhry, MD
Sharjeel Chaudhry was a Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Fellow. His research work has been published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation and The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the mechanims that drive thromboinflammation in vivo.
Sharjeel graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Human Biology, Health, and Society. After undergrad, Sharjeel worked for two years as a management consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, where he advised on large-scale modernization efforts for the Veterans Health Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. He is a graduate of George Washington University in Washington, DC.
Previously, Sharjeel worked in the Flaumenhaft Lab as an NIH funded T-35 research fellow.
Awards:
2017 – William Beaumont Research Award 1st Place – George Washington University
2017 to 2018 – Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Fellowship
Somal Khan, MD
Somal is originally from Pakistan where she received her medical degree from Army Medical College. Her research focused on developing a rapid, cost-effective whole blood assay to help determine specialized dosing of anti-platelet agents in patients with cardiovascular diseases and stroke. She was also involved in a project exploring the redox state of thiol isomerases in thrombus formation. Somal will be starting her internal medicine residency at the Lahey Clinic. Outside science, her interests include volunteering and community service, glass painting, running and going to the concerts.
Christina Scartelli, B.A.
Christina was a Research Assistant in the Flaumenhaft lab. She is from Bethlehem, PA and has a B.A. in Biology from Amherst College. She has held previous internships at Sanofi Pasteur and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Calvin Schuster, B.A.
Calvin was a Research Assistant in the Schulman Lab studying genetic modifiers of the tissue factor pathway. He began his work in lab as a student research intern, where he conducted a project studying PDIA2 in the summer of 2017 and then began working on the tissue factor pathway in the summer of 2018. He attended Cornell University in Ithaca, NY where he majored in Biological Sciences and minored in Creative Writing. While at Cornell, he conducted an honors thesis project in the Kotlikoff Lab that focused on combining transgenics and fluorescent imaging to develop a tool to confirm the successful differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells into cardiomyocytes.
Lindsay Tomczak, B.S.
Lindsay was a Research Assistant in the Bendapudi lab studying the contact-dependent coagulation pathway. She attended Union College in upstate New York where she earned her Bachelor of Science in Biology with a minor in Computer Science.