Rotation Graduate Students

Steph Barr, BS

Rotation Student (October-December 2024)
Molecular Medicine Graduate Program, UArizona College of Medicine – Tucson

Steph received her undergraduate degree in Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology from Cedar Crest College in 2020. After graduation, she began working in a high- throughput clinical testing lab for COVID-19. She soon transitioned into biotech research roles at startup companies in the Greater Boston area, where she gained experience in immunotherapy, drug development, and genome engineering technology. Currently, Steph is a first-year Molecular Medicine PhD student at the University of Arizona. She aims to investigate molecular mechanisms in human diseases, with the goal of contributing to the development of novel treatment options for individuals living with genetic disorders in the future. During the rotation time with Dr. Sadayappan, Steph focused on studying the disease mechanism of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy by myosin variants in the S2 region.

Joseph Verry

MD Ph.D. student (June-July, 2023)
Medical Scientist Training Programs (MSTP) UC College of Medicine

Joseph received his Bachelor of Science in Engineering in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Iowa in Spring 2022. He then joined the University of Cincinnati Medical Scientist Training Program in Fall 2022 to complete his MD-PhD training. During his four-week rotation, Joseph will be exposed to multiple models of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, including the generation of cardiac organoids from human-induced pluripotent stem cells. His long-term goal is to diagnose and treat cardiovascular diseases using state-of-the-art technologies.

Mustafa Ozdemir, MS

Graduate Student (Aug 2022-May 2023)
Pathobiology & Molecular Medicine program

Mustafa received his undergraduate degree in Sport Sciences at Ankara University, Turkey. He then earned his master’s degree in Exercise Physiology under the supervision of Dr. Haydar Demirel at Hacettepe University, Turkey. He learned basic lab techniques while investigating the effects of whole-body vibration application on a rat model of casting-induced muscle wasting during his training in Dr. Demirel’s Lab. Five times during his undergrad and master's studies, he received funding from Erasmus+ Study Abroad and Internship Programs supported by the European Commission. After earning his master’s degree, he joined Dr. Scott Powers' lab at the University of Florida with a Fulbright grant to pursue a Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology. In Dr. Sadayappan Lab, his research rotation was focused on understanding the physiological roles of skeletal muscle paralogs of myosin-binding protein-C in health and disease.

Gaury Dhamdhere, MBBS

Graduate Student, Molecular Genetics, Biochemistry and Microbiology
Rotation (November 2022 – Jan 2023)

Gaury completed her MBBS in India. She has done Master’s in Biology from University of Delaware. Gaury is in her first year of Ph.D. program in the MOLGEN department at University of Cincinnati. She is currently rotating in the Sadayappan lab to learn about generating cardiac organoids, an in vitro three-dimensional model, using human induced pluripotent stem cells for studying the role of MYBPC3 gene variants in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Jeyashree Alagarsamy, MS

Graduate Student, Molecular Genetics, Biochemistry and Microbiology
Rotation (July - September 2021)

Jeyashree received her Bachelor’s and Master’s in Industrial Microbiology from India. She earned her second Master’s in Biological Sciences from Cal Poly Pomona, USA. Jeyashree is a first-year Ph.D. student in Molecular Genetics, Biochemistry and Microbiology at University of Cincinnati. Her rotation in Dr. Sadayappan’s lab focuses on defining the role of South Asian-specific MYBPC3 gene variants to cause contractile dysfunction, cardiomyopathies and heart failure using human induced pluripotent stem cells, organoids and humanized mouse models.

Kathrynne Warrick, BS

MD PhD graduate student, MSTP
Rotation student (July 2020)

Kathy received her Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan. She then joined the University of Cincinnati Medical Scientist Training Program in 2019 for MD-PhD program. During her four-week rotation in our lab, Kathy was introduced to the role of cMyBP-C and learned key techniques utilized by the lab including specialized muscle testing and molecular biology methods.

Danielle Stiene, BS

Graduate student, Pathobiology and Molecular Medicine
Rotation student (November 2019 - February 2020)

Danielle is in her first year of pursuing her PhD from the Pathobiology and Molecular Medicine program at the University of Cincinnati. She received her Bachelor’s of Science in Cellular and Molecular Biology from Ohio University. She is currently working on investigating the presence of MyBPC1 and 2 in smooth muscle during her 12-week rotation in the Sadayappan Lab.

Darshini Desai, MS

Graduate student, Molecular, Cellular and Biochemical Pharmacology
Rotation student (August - October 2018)

Darshini Desai is pursuing her PhD in Molecular, Cellular and Biochemical Pharmacology at University of Cincinnati. She received her Bachelors in Pharmacy at Mumbai University from India and her Masters from Auburn University, USA. She is currently working as a rotational student in Dr. Sadayappan’s Lab focusing on the role of mybpc1 gene in mouse skeletal muscle cells.

Xiaolong Ma, MS

Graduate student, Pharmacology and System Physiology, University of Cincinnati
Rotation Student: September- December 2018

Currently, Xiaolong is a 2nd year Graduate Student working on his Ph.D. dissertation at University of Cincinnati. As a young physiologist, he has a solid foundation in cardiology. He has already learned using the western blot to analyze three myosin-binding protein subtypes and immunohistochemistry methods to detect cMyBP-c within sarcomere. He will spend three months in Dr. Sadayappan’s lab pursuing his interest in discovering the interaction of CDK4/6 inhibitor and cardiac function.

Brittany C. Duncan

Graduate student, Molecular, Cellular and Biochemical Pharmacology Program
Rotation student (November 2018 - February 2019)

Brittany is a first year PhD student in the Molecular, Cellular and Biochemical Pharmacology Program with an interest in cardiovascular pharmacology. Her long-term goal is to be a physician-scientist discovering novel therapies for cardiovascular disease. Her research project at Sadayappan lab involves determine genotype-phenotype correlation and define the mechanism of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Remon S. Azer, M.Sc.

Graduate Student, Pharmacology and System Physiology, University of Cincinnati
Rotation student (Jan 2018-Present)

RemonAzer has received his Master of Science in biochemistry from Cairo University, Egypt in October 2012. Remon joined the PhD program in System Biology & Physiology at the University of Cincinnati. Remon is interested in cardiovascular genetics and bioinformatics especially the grey area between both fields. Remon has 8 years of experience as a molecular geneticist at Aswan Heart Center, Egypt.He worked on the national project for molecular characterization of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy by molecular screening for the main sarcomeric genes (MYBPC3, MYH7 and TNNT2) among Egyptian patients with HCM. He has published 4 journal articles. His current project involves determining novel variants in South Asian subjects with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Latia Tucker

Graduate student, Molecular, Cellular and Biochemical Pharmacology Program
Rotation student (November 2018 - February 2019)

Latia is a graduate student in the Molecular, Cellular and Biochemical Pharmacology Program PhD program at University Cincinnati. She came to Dr. Sadayappan’s lab for an 8-week rotation to work on elucidating the inflammatory effects and immune response elicited by the N-terminal fragment of cardiac myosin binding protein-C.

Olga Raguimova

Graduate Student, Loyola University Chicago, Health Sciences Division
Rotation Student : January – February 2013

Olga was a graduate student working on her PhD thesis at Loyola University Chicago. As part of her curriculum, she came to Dr. Sadayappan’s lab for a three-month rotation to work on the methods of assessing mitochondrial stability in order to identify the role played by ETFDH in heart dysfunction.

Niya Morris

Graduate Student, Loyola University Chicago, Health Sciences Division
Rotation Student: October – December 2012

Niya successfully spent three months in the Sadayappan lab to learn and perform Western blot analysis to determine the level of ETFDH protein expression in cardiomyocytes. She also mastered immunofluorescence analyses to define ETFDH localization and cell culture experiments to overexpress ETFDH in neonatal cardiomyocytes.

Ryan Himes

Graduate Student, Loyola University Chicago, Health Sciences Division
Rotation Student : April – June 2011

Ryan was a graduate student working on his PhD thesis under the mentorship of Dr. Seth Robia. He spent three months in the Sadayappan lab to learn and perform cloning experiments to generate recombinant peptides using the pET expression system. He was able to successfully clone the N’ region of human cMyBP-C and generate HIS-tagged recombinant proteins.

For queries and opportunities, Please Contact :

Sakthivel Sadayappan, PhD, MBA, FAHA
Professor and Head
Department of Cellular & Molecular Medicine
Associate Director, Sarver Heart Center
Czarina M. & Humberto S. Lopez Chair for Excellence in Cardiovascular Research
University of Arizona College of Medicine
Tucson, AZ 85724-5217, USA

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