Lab People
macara-lab
Miki Daniel
Lab Manager
Miki is studying the apical intercalation of cells into epithelial monolayers, and using mouse models to study mammary gland development.
Christian de Caestecker
Postdoctoral fellow, CDB
Christian uses synthetic biology and single molecule approaches to investigate delivery of polarity proteins to the cell membrane (Nature Cell Biol 2024). He graduated this spring and is recently took a position as a postdoct at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus, with Shaohe Wang, where he is studying salivary gland development.
Loic Fort, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Loic is investigating the roles of mechanical forces and signaling in mesoderm specification of human pluripotent stem cells. He has recently accepted a faculty position at UT Arlington and will be starting his lab at the end of the summer!
Tung Hoang
Graduate student, CDB
Tung is interested in cancer biology and is studying early events in the initiation of breast cancer using mouse models and in vitro approaches.
Vaishna Vamadevan, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Vaishna is investigating how signals from dying cells license surviving human pluripotent stem cells to respond to Wnt signaling and commit to the mesoderm lineage. She is using Cut & Run and ATACseq assays to determine the occupancy and accessibility of Wnt-responsive genes in these stem cells.
Aishwarya Venkataravi, PhD, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow, CDB
Aishwarya is investigating the mechanism of apical intercalation, in which cells force their way into a pre-existing epithelial monolayer.
Jasmine (Huiyaxin) Wang
Undergrad Student, CDB
Jasmine is working on the mechanisms that control apical delivery of membrane proteins from the Golgi, in polarized epithelial cells. She is also studying the dynamics of tight junctions, using CRISPR knock-in cell lines and timelapse multichannel confocal imaging.