2015

Sara Jones is a postdoctoral fellow in Feng Zhang's lab at the Broad Institute. Her research focuses on identifying and developing novel strategies for gene editing through the study of organisms that aren’t usually studied in the lab.

BroadIgnite '15 awardees Eric Minikel and Sonia Vallabh are Ph.D. students in Stuart Schreiber's laboratory at the Broad Institute. In 2010, Sonia’s mother abruptly developed and died of prion disease— a rapidly progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disorder caused by the spread of misfolded proteins in the brain. The following year, Sonia learned she had the same mutation that caused her mother’s disease. Thus, Sonia and her husband Eric left their career in consulting to begin studying biology, with the long-term goal of designing small molecule therapeutics for prion diseases.

Alex Shalek is a chemical biologist who uses nanotechnology techniques to understand how cells work together in health and disease. He is the Hermann L.F. von Helmholtz Career Development Professor at the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and an assistant professor of chemistry at MIT, where he is a core member of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. He is also an associate member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard.

Eliezer Van Allen is a cancer researcher who uses genomics to guide treatment decisions in genitourinary (prostate, kidney, testicular, and bladder) cancers. He is also a practicing oncologist at Dana-Farber/Partners Cancer Care.