One of the most satisfying things as a faculty is to see the trainees/mentees succeed! In addition to our postdocs and graduate students, I have the pleasure of working with excellent undergraduate and high-school students. They have different career interests, but they are all highly motivated and truly excellent. I apparently cannot take credit for their success, but it makes me feel very happy that I may have had some positive impacts on their life. My undergraduate research experience in an ecological evolution lab (with Dr. Shuangquan Huang) and later in a human genetics lab (with Dr. Bing Su) led me to where I am today, working on human genetics and evolution. I am striving to provide similar learning opportunities to students in my lab.

I recently met some of our lab alumni, and I was very happy to hear their updates.

Aaron Geanas, BS in Genetics, class of 2022. Aaron worked in the wet lab under the supervision of Shuang from 2021 Spring to 2022 Spring. Aaron is a natural entrepreneur, enthusiastic, creative, and always trying to bring ideas into reality. He is currently in the Pathway MBA program in the Terry Business School at the University of Georgia. He is on track to start his own companies!

Radhika Chatterjee, BS in Cellular Biology and AB in Economics, class of 2022. Radhika joined the lab in fall 2019 and stayed until her graduation. She started in our wet lab projects and later during the COVID-19 pandemic, transitioned into our computational projects (worked under the supervision of Yitang). She is a co-author in one of our papers. She is currently a postbaccalaureate IRTA Research Fellow at the Vaccine Research Center, NIAID, NIH. She is planning to go to medical school. She has accumulated so much research and clinical experience that she will be an excellent candidate for a MD/PhD program.

Haley Chishom, BS in Biology, class of 2020. Haley joined the lab in spring 2019 and stayed until her graduation. She worked directly with me to analyze single-cell RNAseq datasets. She is currently at the Medical College of Georgia and one step closer to be a doctor!


Nuno Carvalho joined the lab in 2020 as a high-school research assistant through the UGA Young Dawg program. He worked under the mentoring of Michael and learned to perform GWAS and GWIS. I met Nuno at ASHG 2022. He is currently an undergrad at Georgia Tech and works in the Joe Lachance lab. Nuno's research was featured in a talk by his advisor. Nuno is planning to go to a PhD program after graduation (any lab will be lucky to have him!). But before that, I am looking forward to seeing his first-authored paper published soon!