Team – Brunk Lab

Our lab is committed to fostering a collaborative and dynamic learning environment tailored to each team member’s strengths and goals. We value diverse perspectives and encourage applicants with unique academic and professional backgrounds. Join us to explore cutting-edge research in an environment that champions respect, curiosity, and growth.

Elizabeth Brunk, Phd (She/her)

Principal Investigator. Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Department of Chemistry. Faculty in the Integrated Program for Biological Genome Sciences (iBGS). Member of UNC Lineberger Cancer Center and the Computational Medicine Program. Affiliate of the Carolina Applied Math Program.

Yue Wang (She/her)

6th year Pharmacology graduate student working towards a PhD degree (expected in 2025). Yue transferred into the Brunk lab in 2021 without any computational skills and is now close to completing a majorly computational PhD! Her work focuses on understanding heterogeneity in chromatin accessibility and RNA in cells with high levels of copy number variation. She has developed computational pipelines that analyze single cell multiomincs (scRNA + scATAC) data. She is also working on characterizing global characteristics of breast cancer cell lines and tumors and comparing their salient molecular states to 3D cell models, such as organoids.

Jingting Chen (He/him)

4rth year Biochemistry and Biophysics student working toward a PhD degree. Jingting applies cutting-edge experimental techniques to characterize karyotypes of cells with high decree of genetic heterogeneity. He has developed many of the lab’s cytogenetic protocols and is currently working to integrate this data with single cell sequencing approaches to determine relationships between karyotype heterogeneity, RNA expression and chromatin accessibility in single cell resolution. He is co-first author on a publication describing a novel protocol for visualizing chromosomal aberrations using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), which can be found in Biotechniques!

Kriti Shukla (She/her)

Third year Chemistry graduate student working toward a PhD degree. Kriti received her undergraduate degree in Chemistry with a minor in Math from UCLA. Her work in the Brunk lab focuses on developing computational and machine learning methods to survey genomic variants and determine their impact of genome functioning at large. She has integrated data from the Dependency Map, with three dimensional protein structural data, pooled CRISPR screens, and multiplex assays for variant effects (MAVE) data. She is first author on a manuscript that was recently accepted in ACS JCIM in 2024!

Jonnathan Castro (He/him)

1st year Chemistry graduate student working toward a PhD degree. Jonnathan received his undergraduate degree in Chemistry. His work in the Brunk lab focuses on developing computational and machine learning methods to survey genomic variants and determine their impact on drug response. He has integrated data from the Dependency Map, with three dimensional protein structural data, and pooled drug screens.

Oliver Cope (They/them)

Post-bac researcher with a degree in Biology (graduated Spring 2024). Working in the Brunk lab, Oliver developed primary cell culture skills performs cytogenetics assays, imaging and other molecular biology and functional genomics experiments. They are co-leading a project that integrates population ecology principles to better understand how cell-to-cell heterogeneity in karyotypes leads to fitness gains and selection outcomes. They plan to apply to graduate school to study ecology in 1-2 years.

William Dennis (He/him)

Post-bac researcher with a degree in Chemistry (graduated Spring 2024). William has led several Fluorescence in situ Hybridization experiments to better understand how cells adapt their genomes in response to drugs and other perturbations. He is co-author on three manuscripts and is currently applying to graduate school for Fall 2025.

Damien Guilbaud (He/him)

Post-bac researcher with a degree in Materials Science Engineering (graduated Spring 2024). Damien has recently completed a project that employs computer vision methods to automate the detection and counting of chromosomal aberrations in molecular imaging data. His coauthored manuscript is now under review and in biorxiv! He is currently applying to graduate school for Fall 2025.

Jacob Fessler (He/Him)

Undergraduate research assistant majoring in Computer Science (senior). Jacob has co-led a study in which online databases, vendor websites and literature was mined for karyotype data on thousands of cancer cell lines. He applied his programming skills to perform computational predictions of karyotype features on hundreds of cell lines and built a website to host this knowledge and data. He is co-first author on a paper describing these efforts is published in NAR Cancer in 2024.

Aarav Mehta (He/Him)

Undergraduate research assistant double majoring in Computer Science and Biology (senior). Aarav is interested in applying his computer science background to build machine learning models that predict karyotype features from flow cytometry and single cell imaging data. He is a recipient of the SURF Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship. He will be completing an honors thesis this spring prior to graduating. His co-first author manuscript is now in review and available on biorxiv!

Adesuwa Igbinigie (She/her)

Undergraduate research assistant majoring in Quantitative Biology (junior). Adesuwa is planning on an honors Biology thesis in the Brunk lab. She has been working to study genetic heterogeneity in the karyotypes of triple negative breast cancer cell lines.

Darby Chen (She/her)

Undergraduate research assistant majoring in Chemistry (junior). Darby has been working to study genetic heterogeneity in the karyotypes of cancer cell lines. She is a co-author on a manuscript that is under review and in the biorxiv!

Xinyi (Celia) Li (She/her)

Undergraduate research assistant majoring in Statistics (junior). Celia’s project involves studying patterns in the open chromatin accessibility of patient samples to determine aberrations in their chromosomal content. She is also helping on a translational project entailing patient data and HER2 amplifications.

Emma Whitman (She/her)

Undergraduate research assistant majoring in Chemistry (junior). Emma is gaining both computational and experimental molecular biology skills. She is helping on a translational project entailing patient data and HER2 amplifications.

Anushka Pramanik (She/her)

NCSSM High school student researcher. Through NCSSM Mentorship program, Anushka works with the Brunk lab two days a week. She is learning computational chemistry, machine learning, and data literacy skills.

Brunk Lab Alumni and Previous Members