Meet our team!
People
Post-doctoral Scholars
Marc Gastou PhD
Post-doctoral Research Fellow
Department of Pediatrics - Medical Genetics
Marc is a name given only to the best. Marcs' don't come along often and when they do hold onto them because you won't find someone like him. When life is letting you down he is the one who will always be there by your side.
Marc works on Gaucher disease. He is trying to develop a cure for Gaucher disease type 1 and an approach that could help the neuronopathic forms like type 2 and type 3.
Previous Institution: Universite De Paris Vii, Universite De Montpellier
Hyunmin Cho, PhD
Post-doctoral Research Fellow
Department of Pediatrics - Medical Genetics
I am a stem cell biologist interested in new therapeutic strategies for patients with genetic disorders. My current research goals are the utilization of hematopoietic stem cells, CRISPR/Cas9 mediated genome editing, and improvement of therapeutic efficiency of stem cell therapy. I get great pleasure when my research efforts support my goal of connecting a bench to bedside.
Previous Institution: Seoul National University
Edina Poletto
Incoming Post-doctoral Research Fellow
Edina has always worked with genetic diseases, from molecular diagnosis to developing new therapies. During her PhD, she spent a year at the Gomez-Ospina lab as a Visiting Student Researcher, working mainly with genome editing of hematopoietic stem cells for mucopolysaccharidosis type I.
Previous Institution: Gene Therapy Center, Hospital de Clinicas de Porto Alegre, Porto Alegre, Brazil
Fun Fact: She enjoys hiking, sewing and feeding Brazilian cheese bread to lab members!
Lab Staff
Pasqualina (Lina) Colella, PhD
Senior Research Scientist
Department of Pediatrics - Genetics
Pasqualina (Lina) Colella is Research Scientist in the Gomez-Ospina group and she is focused on developing improved HSPC-based approaches to treat neurometabolic diseases. Lina received her MS in Biology at the University of Naples Federico II (Italy), her PhD in Human Genetics from Open University (UK) at the Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine (TIGEM, Italy) and was awarded Postdoctoral fellowships from Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (EU) and Genethon (France). Lina is interested in developing effective gene and cell therapies for untreatable diseases and has expertise in the field of in vivo AAV gene therapy and genome editing for inherited retinal degenerations and lysosomal storage diseases.
María Valentina Suárez-Nieto
Life Science Research Professional
Department of Pediatrics - Genetics
Valentina recently graduated from Stanford where she studied Biology with a concentration in Neurobiology, and minored in Human rights and Data Science. She is interested in stem cell therapy and regenerative research, and hopes to pursue a career in this field as a physician-scientist. Having grown up in Villavicencio, Colombia, Valentina enjoys dancing salsa during her free time, and volunteering in her community.
Graduate Student
Alvaro Amorin
Graduate Student
Medical Scientist Training Program
Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine
According to urbandictionary.com Alvaro knows how to strike conversations, he can be quite the charmer, the best aspect of Alvaro would be his giving nature, he often gives his all and even after keeps on giving.
In the lab, he works on developing a stem cell therapy for a devastating disease known as Krabbe. He is using a combined transplantation approach using the patient's own modified cells to correct symptoms in the central and peripheral nervous system
Undergraduate Students
Ruhi Sayana
Undergraduate Student
Stanford University
Ruhi is an undergraduate student interested in the biomedical and biocomputational sciences. She has been in the Gomez-Ospina Lab since the spring of 2020, when she remotely worked on analyzing whole genome sequencing data. Her current work involves developing cellular tools to enable the rapid analysis of lysosome metabolomics, with applications in discovering currently unknown mechanisms of lysosomal storage disorders such as NCLs. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, going to the beach, and baking.
Andrea Leon Tenorio
Undergraduate Student
Stanford University
Andrea is an undergraduate at Stanford majoring in bioengineering. She is currently working on a project that aims to demonstrate a missense mutation in the DNASE1L3 gene results in abnormal enzyme activity leading to inability to degrade DNA. In the future, Andrea hopes to pursue both medicine and research. In her free time, she enjoys playing tennis, dancing bachata, and baking.
Mascot
You?
Thomas Veltman, PhD
Visiting Scholar
Thomas continues to work on the development of point-of-care blood ammonia sensor .
Samantha Scharenberg
MSTP student
Stanford University
Technically never an official member of the lab. Sam trained with Dr. Gomez-Ospina. She worked on Gaucher disease
Jackie Amorin
Previous Lab Manager
Jackie is now a graduate student as UCSD
Timothy Gomezstein
RIP 2019-2021
Lived: 83.6 million years ago - 66 million years ago (Cretaceous)
Hobbies: Biking, Juggling, Pipetting, Guitar, beach walks
Favorite music: Bad Bunny
Favorite foods: Curry
Our beloved mascot Timothy with be dearly missed. He's currently on sabbatical. We hope to see him again roaming the halls of Lokey!
You?
Moises Rivera
Past lab manager
Graduated from San Jose State University while working in the biotech/bioresearch since 1990. I first joined Dr. Theo Palmer's lab in 2005 and since then I have been helping great people in the lab to get their projects done I spend my time helping lab members with anything they may need not only in the lab, but also outside the lab. In my spare time, I enjoy playing soccer and building and repairing anything around the house.
Jessica Arozqueta Basurto, M.S.
Graduate Student
Medical Scientist Training Program
Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine
During my undergraduate studies at the University of California Santa Cruz, I conducted research in Dr. Bin Chen’s laboratory. There I studied how molecular mechanisms control the transition in radial glia cells from generating cortical excitatory neurons to olfactory bulb interneuron. I then went on to complete a master’s at San Francisco State University as a California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) Bridges fellow. While a CIRM scholar, I conducted my research under the mentorship of Dr. Alvarez-Buylla at the University of California San Francisco. My research focused on studying the cellular composition of the ventricular-subventricular zone with the goal of identifying populations of neural stem cells in the postnatal human brain. At Stanford, I hope to contribute to the development of clinical therapeutics to address neurodegenerative diseases. Outside of the lab, I like to engage in activities like hiking, dancing, painting, going to museums, and trying out new food cuisines.
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