New Lab Manager + New Grad Student!
We’re incredibly excited to welcome two new members to the lab!
Catherine McGuinness is new laboratory manager that will be enabling the science we do in the lab, promoting our laboratory culture, ensuring safety, and discovering new frontiers in genomics!
Jared Akers is a new graduate student joining the lab where he will apply his already extensive wet-bench experience and soon to be computation prowess to understanding genomic questions at the intersection of human evolution and disease.
Read on below for their bios, or the whole team here!
Catherine McGuinness - Laboratory Manager
Catherine
is our new Laboratory Manager! After completing her bachelor’s in Physics at Smith College, she studied blood coagulation as a research technician in Dr. Kenneth Mann’s lab at the University of Vermont. Catherine then earned her master's in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry here at Yale, studying microtubule dynamics with Joe Howard. She then spent a few years as the quality assurance manager at Stony Creek Brewery, and now is returning to academia as the Reilly lab manager. Outside of the lab, Catherine enjoys crafting, spending time with her family, volunteering, and exploring New Haven.
Jared
is a prospective PhD student who joined the Reilly Lab in August, 2022. He will be collaborating with the Tucci Lab to study Denisovan introgressed variants using Massively Parallel Reporter Assays (MPRA) and CRISPR-mediated gene editing. His primary thesis will be on understanding how relatively recent (from an evolutionary perspective) positive selection in humans contributes to human traits, in this project he will work with Stephen Rong and use MPRA and CRISPR-mediated gene editing to interpret the positively selected loci identified by DeepSweep.
Prior to coming to Yale and joining the Reilly Lab, Jared worked as a Laboratory Technician in Dr. Kamena Kostova’s Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Embryology. Under Dr. Kamena Kostova’s mentorship he studied human ribosome biogenesis and assisted in characterizing the previously uncharacterized Zinc-finger protein ZNF574. Jared received his B.S. in Genetics from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 2018; while a student he performed research in Dr. Qiang Chang’s Lab, and investigated the gene regulatory mechanisms underpinning folding of the developing human neocortex. Prior to transferring to UW-Madison he studied at Nicolet Area Technical College, a small community college close to his former home in Northern Wisconsin. In his free time he enjoys dance, almost anything outdoors, and learning new things (current project : Spanish).
Jared - Graduate Student
