Debasmita Mondal will be joining UChicago as a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Margaret Gardel’s lab starting in early 2024. Before this, she was a postdoc at ENS de Lyon, France for about a year after graduating from IISc, Bangalore, India. She has worked on cell motility, flow field, active ciliary mechanics, and synthetic colloids. In the Gardel lab, she will be exploring mechanical information processing in actin cytoskeleton.

Sneha Paul is a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Jingyi Fei. Her research aims at using super-resolution microscopy to understand the organization of RNA molecules in phase-separated entities called nuclear speckles. A fluorescence spectroscopy and microscopy enthusiast, Sneha graduated from University of Hyderabad, India where she investigated dynamic processes in canonical and non-canonical nucleic acids primarily using photophysical techniques. Her research interests lie in using fluorescence based imaging and spectroscopic tools to investigate biological problems.

Kalki Kukreja is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Chuan He’s and Dr. Yun Fang’s labs at the University of Chicago. She is interested in the role of small non-coding RNAs in cardiovascular physiology and disease. Prior to this, Kalki pursued her PhD in Dr. Allon Klein’s lab at Harvard University. During her PhD, she studied the role of cell signaling and cell cycle in tissue and embryonic development by combining perturbation experiments with single-cell RNA-sequencing.

Xinqi Fan is a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Jingyi Fei’s lab in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago.  He is interested in understanding the biological functions of nuclear speckles.  Prior to this, he graduated from Peking University where he developed chemical tools to decipher glyco-code in mammalian cells.  After that, he finished his postdoctoral research in Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry where he worked on imaging of gut microbiota in living animals.  Now he is focused on the study of eukaryotic RNA localization and processing, particularly the function of nuclear speckles in RNA processing and metabolism.

Shailaja Seetharaman is a postdoctoral researcher in the Gardel Lab at the University of Chicago. She received her PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology from Institut Pasteur, Paris, and her Master’s in Biomedical and Molecular Sciences from King’s College London. Her research interests lie in the field of cell and tissue mechanics, where she aims to understand how subcellular dynamics control tissue organization and functioning, in physiological and pathological conditions. In particular, her research focuses on identifying novel cytoskeletal crosstalk mechanisms that contribute to cell adhesion, migration and mechanotransduction in normal tissues, and how alterations in these cellular processes can drive disease progression. 

Bei Liu is a postdoctoral researcher working in Dr. Chuan He’s lab in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago.  His research focuses on understanding the biological functions of epitranscriptomic modifications.  He graduated from Duke University where he worked on investigating the impact of chemical modifications on RNA structure and dynamics.  He is interested in developing methods to manipulate RNA structure and activity in cells.