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Cornell University

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Epigenomics Facility

William Lai

Epigenomics Interim Director

Will became the interim director of the Bioinformatics Facility in 2022. To read more about Will’s expertise and experience, see the leadership page.

Amy Lyndaker

Lab Manager

Amy received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology from Cornell University in 2009 studying mechanisms of DNA repair and recombination. She then pursued postdoctoral research in the fields of mammalian genome instability, cancer genetics, and infertility in the Dept. of Biomedical Sciences at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. Most recently Amy was a tenured Associate Professor of Biology at Elmira College, primarily teaching undergraduate coursework in genetics, biochemistry, and the biology of cancer as well as running a student-centered research program. She joined the BRC Epigenomics Core Facility as Lab Manager in the fall of 2022.

Danying Shao

Collaborative Senior Researcher

Danying holds a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of California, San Diego, and a B.S. in Physics from Peking University. She specializes in computational biology, data science, and web applications. She has worked on a wide range of projects, including cell signaling, cell motility, next-generation sequencing pipelines, labor management, and institutional research.

Catherine Smugereski

Technician

Catherine graduated from Elmira College with a Bachelor of Science in molecular biology.  She worked in several research labs in the Natural Sciences department at Elmira, most recently working on her research project involving subcloning a human gene into a plasmid in preparation for screening a human cDNA library via yeast two-hybrid. 

Devin Mellini

Technician

Devin graduated from Ithaca College with a Bachelor’s degree in biology. He was a member of Te-Wen Lo's lab for a year and a half while at Ithaca. His interests include researching anything genetics related, especially epigenetics. In his free time he enjoys playing guitar, reading, and exercising. 

Sally Han

Undergraduate Student Researcher

Sally is a junior in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences studying Information Science with a minor in business from Dyson. She is interested in statistical data analysis as well as User Interface UX/UI research and is excited to explore this further for scientifically-focused epigenomics software. Sally has course experience with UX/UI design where she was able to recreate different user interfaces and prototypes for pre-existing apps using Figma. She has experience leading brainstorming sessions and creating different user flows ultimately meant to develop software features for maximizing a user’s experience. She will continue this user-centered approach in her work for our Core, compiling feedback and developing lists of potential features and improvements. Her work is informing all of us about the importance of understanding user-centric design and engineering needs, and how they play a significant role in improving our software offerings. In her free time, she enjoys listening and finding new music, taking pictures with her polaroid, and exploring new places alone or with friends, and is looking forward to meeting and working with everyone.

Kapil Khanal

Graduate Student Intern

Kapil Khanal is interested in Complex Systems. He is currently pursuing his Master's degree in Energy Systems Optimization at Cornell. His research focuses on making electrical grids more resilient using machine learning methods. In the future, he hopes to design, optimize and engineer several utility systems. Kapil spends his spare time either hiking, cooking, or visualizing data. He follows soccer and occasionally dabbles in sports analytics for fun.

Audrey Sackey

Undergraduate Student Researcher

Audrey is a sophmore at Cornell with an interest in software engineering and User Interface UX/UI design. She has prior experience with C programming, MATLAB, python programming, and HTML. For our Epigenomics Core, she is developing her software engineering skills, mentoring with our senior researcher. She will be writing XML and python programs for our Core’s bioinformatic workflows and learning Best Practices for writing software as a part of a team with Git and other software development tools.

Ying Zhang

Undergraduate Student Researcher

Ying Zhang has studied Environmental Design (Interior Design+ Landscape Design) for six years and is pursuing Master of Landscape Architecture at Cornell. My study interest lies in User experience design and Ecological landscape design. Life is about always trying something new :)