People | Flannick Lab

Jason Flannick

Position: Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and the Division of Genetics and Genomics at Boston Children’s Hospital, and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Interests: The Flannick lab develops computational approaches to use human genetic and broader genomic data to understand or better treat human diseases, with a current focus on diabetes. Jason’s research has spanned pure computer science, comparative genomics, and finally human genetics, with a current focus on using computational and statistical methods to impact human health. Prior to starting the Flannick lab, Jason was a postdoctoral research fellow in David Altshuler’s lab at Mass Gen Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He received his PhD and MS in computer science from Stanford University.

Contact: flannick (at) broadinstitute (dot) org

Peter Dornbos

Position: Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Boston Children's Hospital and the Broad Institute MIT and Harvard

Interests: Peter's current research interests are in using genetics-based approaches to identify genes and pathways that might be involved in disease processes and/or used for drug targets. He received a PhD with a dual concentration in a) Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and b) Environmental and Integrative Toxicology from Michigan State University and a MSc in Toxicology from University of Michigan. Peter joined the Flannick lab in 2019. View his previous publications here.

Contact: pdornbos (at) broadinstitute (dot) org

Marc Duby

Position: Principal Software Engineer at Broad Institute

Interests: Marc's current interest are applying the latest cloud and development methodologies to efficiently manage the data coming into the Flannick Lab as well as using new machine learning techniques to analyze patterns within the data. He received a Master's in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in robotics from Columbia University.

Contact: mduby (at) broadinstitute (dot) org

Clint Gilbert

Position: Senior Software Engineer at Broad Institute

Interests: Clint's interests include programming languages, functional programming, and type systems, as well as nurturing an appreciation for craftsmanship among software engineers.

Contact: cgilbert (at) broadinstitute (dot) org

Ryan Koesterer

Position: Associate Computational Biologist II at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Interests: Ryan's primary interest is in developing computational and analytical methods that have a positive impact on human health. He joined the Flannick lab in January 2016 to develop advanced pipelines geared towards broad scale harmonization and rapid quality control and analysis of large amounts of genetic data. He received his MS in Mathematics from Brandeis University.

Contact: ryank (at) broadinstitute (dot) org

Oliver Ruebenacker

Position: Senior Software Engineer

Interests: Oliver is interested in writing tools to help researchers create and share complex analysis methods, especially workflow engines and workflow languages, supporting distributed computing. Oliver has his PhD in physics from UMass Amherst

Contact: oliverr (at) broadinstitute (dot) org

Mónica Ruiz

Position: Visiting Graduate Student Research Assistant

Interests: Mónica is interested in analysis of -omics data to prioritize candidate genes and improve prediction and treatment of complex diseases. Mónica is currently a member of the Marie Sklodowska Curie Innovative Training Network TREATMENT. Mónica joined the Flannick lab in 2019.

Contact: mruiz (at) broadinstitute (dot) org

Shuvom Sadhuka

Position: Undergraduate Research Assistant

Interests: Shuvom is a sophomore at Harvard pursuing a bachelor's in Computer Science and Statistics broadly interested in developing algorithms and statistical/machine learning methods to better understand genetic and genomic data. Currently, he's working to develop algorithms and methods to characterize how rare coding variants associated with diabetes translate to changes in protein structures. Outside of class and research, Shuvom enjoys dancing and reading.

Contact: ssadhuka (at) college (dot) harvard (dot) edu

Preeti Singh

Position: Associate Software Engineer

Contact: psingh (at) broadinstitute (dot) org

Lokendra Thakur

Position: Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Boston Children's Hospital and the Broad Institute MIT and Harvard

Interests: Lokendra’s research interests are in developing models, algorithms, and analysis tools for identifying genes and/or biomarkers of disease that may lead to novel therapeutics. Lokendra received his PhD in applied mathematics from Louisiana State University and joined the Flannick lab in 2018.

Contact: lthakur (at) broadinstitute (dot) org

Former Lab Members

Marcin von Grotthuss

Position: Senior Computational Scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Interests: Marcin is interested in developing knowledge portals for complex traits like type 2 diabetes, stroke, and cardiovascular diseases. He is also an instrumental scientist in the consortium that builds a Biomedical Data Translator. Previously, he has been involved in applying machine-learning technics to estimate biomedical properties of small molecules, worked on distant sequence-structure-function relationships in proteins, and, most recently, has focused on the genomics of model organisms and human genetics (e.g.1000 Genomes Project). He received a Ph.D. in bioinformatics at Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands and has gained professional experiences at Sanford-Burnham Institute (La Jolla), University of Washington (Seattle), Harvard University, University of Cambridge, University of California Irvine, and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School.

Contact: mvg (at) broadinstitute (dot) org

Furkan Buyukgol

Position: Undergraduate Summer Research Intern

Interests: Furkan's main interests are in use of genome wide analysis to detect novel disease-related genes. He joined the Flannick Lab as a summer student intern in 2019. Currently, Furkan is studying at Abdullah Gul University in Turkey with a focus on molecular biology and genetics.

Ben Alexander

Position: Senior Principal Software Engineer

Interests: Ben has spent over 20 years developing scientific software, mostly in the service of drug discovery and drug development. He joined the Chemical Biology group at the Broad Institute in 2010 but switched to the Flannick group in 2014, and has since become convinced that genomics can lead us to biologically relevant drug targets more surely than cheminformatics. He lives in Harvard Massachusetts with his wife and teenage children, along with a free-spirited cat and four nervous chickens.

Contact: balexand (at) broadinstitute (dot) org

Adit Gupta

Position: High School Research Intern

Interests: Adit is interested in developing novel algorithms at the intersection of computer science and biology to create promising therapeutics for diseases. In the lab, Adit focused on analyzing exome sequences from T2D patients to show the strong efficacy of repurposing T2D-related drugs and predict the primary and secondary effects of T2D medicines via gene-level associations. Adit is currently attending Yale University as an undergraduate.