People

Who We Are

Krishna Veeramah

Associate Professor

Krishna received both his B.Sc. in 2003, and Ph.D. in 2008 from University College London. His Ph.D., conducted under the supervision of Mark Thomas, examined the distribution of genetic variation in Africans. He then moved to UCLA as part of John Novembre’s lab where he looked at the genetic architecture of European population isolates. In 2010 he joined Michael Hammer’s lab at the University of Arizona in order to lead a project comparing patterns of genomic variation on the autosomes and X chromosome in apes. Krishna joined the faculty in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook in January 2014 as part of the new initiative in human evolutionary biology where he now runs the Veeramah Lab.

CV
Deven Vyas

Deven Vyas

Postdoc

Deven received his PhD in Biological Anthropology from University of Florida in August 2017. He is analyzing whole genome sequence data from 5th and 6th century (pre-)Lombard-era cemeteries in order to better understand migration, kinship, and processes of cultural change during these periods.

Rachael Herman

Rachael Herman

Postdoc

Rachael’s research focuses on Antarctic penguins and how they respond to climate change using a combination of ecological modeling and population genetics. She is currently an NSF OPP Postdoctoral Research Fellow investigating epigenetic potential as a driver of local adaptation in gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua) along the Western Antarctic Peninsula. 

Yijie Tian

Yijie Tian

PhD Student

Yijie’s interests mainly focus on ancient DNA. She hope to solve questions related to human organization and migration in ancient times by applying ancient DNA methods.

Alexander Kwakye

Alexander Kwakye

PhD Student

My interest is to explore how species have adapted to different environmental conditions, and translate these adaptive measures to solve human diseases. In the Veeramah Lab, I will be studying one major way species adapt to new environments, standing genetic variations.

Sarah Vaccaro

Sarah Vaccaro

PhD Student

Sarah’s interests lie in the field of conservation genomics. Her research is focused on investigating the relationship between epigenetic plasticity and an organism’s ability to tolerate anthropogenic disturbance.

Thomas Bertino

Thomas Bertino

PhD Student

Tom is interested in population genetics, human evolution, ancient DNA and amateur paleontology.

Mariya KonovalyuK

Mariya KonovalyuK

MA Student

I am a Master’s student in the E&E program looking to research areas of evolution involving bacterial resistance & diseases, coevolution, and/or neurogenetics.

Former Lab Members

Dean Bobo – Bionformatician (now at the American Museum of Natural History)

Misha Lipatov – Postdoctoral Scholar

Eduardo Amorim – Postdoctoral Scholar (faculty at Cal State Northridge as of 2021)

Kerry Reid – Postdoctoral Scholar (now Research Faculty at Hong Kong University)

Matthew Marano – E&E Masters Student (now grad student at Texas A&M)

Matthew D’Ambrosio – E&E Masters Student (now Scientist at Boehringer Ingelheim)

Wei Jiang – E&E Masters Student (now grad student at USC)

Giulia Bagarolo – Visiting Masters Student

Taylor Medwig – Rotation Student

Shruti Iyer – Rotation Student

Samantha Henry – Rotation Student

Luiz Machado De Olveira Junior – Rotation student

Jacqueline Ryan – Undergraduate and Lab Manager

Mark Milhaven – Undergraduate and Research Associate (now grad student at ASU)

Jonathan Gaige – Undergraduate (now at New York Genome Center)

James Ancona – Undergraduate

Zain Khan – Undergraduate

Priya Chohan – Undergraduate

Jared Mallozi – Undergraduate

Hillary Babalola – Undergraduate

Abu Nafi – Undergraduate 

Nicholas Streb – Undergraduate 

Hannah Oliver – Undergraduate

Guancheng Zeng – Undergraduate (now Masters student at Imperial College)

Alexsandra Hernandez – Undergraduate (now Master’s student in biomedical science at Stony Brook)

Xiaoyi Xiong – Undergraduate

Arda Sinan Ates – Undergraduate

Vamsi Adabala – Undergraduate

Julia Chivu – Undergraduate

Alina Feng – Undergraduate

Mariana Escobar Rodriguez – Visiting Undergraduate (now PhD student at the Pasteur Institute)

Natalie Dzikowski – Undegraduate and Lab Manager (now PhD student at Duke)

Jeffrey Gaillard- Masters student