Research & Experience

I study immunometabolism and aging in the Ron-Harel Lab, combining experiments with lymph node stromal cells and T-cells with single cell and spatial analysis.

• Isolating and culturing lymph node stromal cells and working with stromal cell and T-cell cocultures.
• Using immunofluorescence staining and confocal microscopy to examine cultured cells and extracellular matrix, alongside flow cytometry for cell characterization.
• Developing computational workflows for single cell and spatial transcriptomics, including cell annotation and comparisons of gene expression across conditions.

Built image analysis tools and contributed to single cell genomics and sequencing workflows at Chan Zuckerberg Biohub San Francisco.

• Developed a custom Cellpose model for zebrafish cell segmentation in MERFISH images of whole embryos.
• Created training and testing datasets for image segmentation, including an approach to selecting training images using Shannon’s entropy.
• Contributed to the Tabula Sapiens Rosetta Donor project by integrating isoform information with single cell gene expression analyses.
• Performed sequencing workflows on MiSeq, NextSeq, and NovaSeq, including quality control, demultiplexing, and data delivery through AWS.

Combined image segmentation and spatial gene expression analysis in a human breast cancer model for my master’s research.

• Developed a custom Cellpose 2.0 segmentation model for a public Vizgen MERSCOPE breast tumor dataset.
• Used Scanpy and Squidpy to explore cell type distributions, clustering, and spatial gene expression patterns.
• Connected cell boundaries identified from images with transcriptomic analysis in an exploratory study of a single specimen.

Completed two consecutive internships at CRISPR Therapeutics studying targeted DNA integration and CAR T-cell optimization.

• 2023
  • Investigated integration of double stranded DNA with 3′ overhangs using CRISPR/Cas9, then assessed editing outcomes through sequencing.
  • Worked on promoterless GFP integration in T-cells and evaluated editing with flow cytometry.
• 2022
  • Studied variations in costimulatory domains in CAR T-cells and their effects on cancer cell targeting.
  • Evaluated experimental outcomes with flow cytometry and digital droplet PCR (ddPCR).