Associate Director
Whitney Hornsby, PhD
Program Manager
Yvonne Fraser, ALB MSc
Project Manager
Ricardo Aguayo, BS
Sara Haidermota, BS
Meaghan Parlee, BS
Clinical Research Coordinators
Aarushi Bhatnagar, BA
Nicholas DaRosa, BS
Shriie Ganesh, BS
Romario Joseph
Kim Lannery, BS
Jack Miller, BS
Dasha Postupaka, BA
Victoria Viscosi, MS
Research Nurse
Patricia Masson, PhD, RN, FAHA
Courtney DeFusco, MSN-NP
Computational Biologists
Rohan Bhukar, MS
Anika Misra, BS
Liying Xue, MS
Undergraduate Students
Nina Kathiresan
Himani Kamineni
Sarvesh Palaniappan
Akshaya Ravi
Rachel Rivera
Adyant Shankar
Graduate Student
Buu Truong, MD
Medical Students
Phoebe Finneran, BS
Meghana Kamineni, BS
Soo Hyun Kim, BSH MS
Jiwoo Lee, BS MS
Michael Pan, BS
Sarah Pitafi, BA MA
Christopher Robinson, BS
Mark Trinder, BS MSc
Selena Zhang, BS
Genetic Counselor
Catherine Spinks, BS MSc
Residents
Tiffany Bellomo, MD
Alyssa Monica Flores, MD
Amanda Jowell, MD
Ashley Pournamdari, MD
Pradeep Rajendran, MD
Ashvita Ramesh, MD
Michael Trinh, MD, PhD
Nishant Uppal, MD MBA
Lianet Vazquez, MD MA
S. Maryam Zekavat, MD PhD
Roger Zou, MD PhD
Fellows
So Mi Jemma Cho, PhD
Jacqueline Dron, PhD
Satoshi Koyama, MD PhD
Tetsushi Nakao, MD PhD
Ohad Oren, MD
Yunfeng Ruan, PhD
Margaret Sunitha Selvaraj, PhD
Joseph Shin, MD PhD
Aeron Small, MD
Md Mesbah Uddin, PhD
Sarah Urbut, MD PhD
Zhi Yu, PhD
Instructors
Romit Bhattacharya, MD
Akl Fahed, MD
Kaavya Paruchuri, MD
Aniruddh Patel, MD
Affiliated Faculty Members
Katharine Clapham, MD
Michael Honigberg, MD MPP
Amy Sarma, MD
Ida Surakka, PhD
Ricardo Aguayo, BS (Project Manager)
Ricardo is currently a project manager. He graduated from Brandeis University with a B.S. in Chemical Biology.
Tiffany Bellomo, MD (MGH Vascular Surgery Resident) 
Dr. Bellomo is currently a Vascular Surgery Resident at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Her areas of interest include the genetic epidemiology peripheral artery disease and aortic disease. Key research contributions include her manuscript entitled Multi-trait genome-wide association study of atherosclerosis detects novel pleiotropic loci and The Effects of the Combined Argatroban/Nitric Oxide Releasing Polymer on Platelet Microparticle-induced Thrombogenicity in Coated Extracorporeal Circuits. She completed her M.D. at the University of Michigan, Sarnoff fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, and NIH IRTA fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in Fredrick, Maryland.
Aarushi Bhatnagar, BA (Clinical Research Coordinator) 
Aarushi is currently a clinical research coordinator at the Natarajan Lab. She is working on the management of various patient-facing studies involving cardiovascular disease in South Asians and clinical drug trials. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology and Psychology from Rutgers University in May of 2023.
Romit Bhattacharya, MD (Instructor) 
Dr. Bhattacharya is a general and preventive cardiologist at MGH, co-leading the MGH Cardiac Lifestyle Program. He is working on the combined effect of genetic and lifestyle factors that lead to the development of cardiovascular disease – with a special focus on clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP). He aims to use digital health tools and large databases to better characterize lifestyle and behavioral risk factors for the development of CHIP and cardiovascular disease broadly. He is supported by the John S. LaDue Memorial Fellowship in Cardiovascular Medicine, and the Novel Screening Technologies grant from the MGH Primary Care Innovation Fund (PCIF). Key research contributions include discovery of the association between unhealthy diet and CHIP, as well as characterization of the effect of CHIP on increasing risk of incident stroke. Dr. Bhattacharya completed his BA degree at the University of Pennsylvania, MD degree at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, residency in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General hospital, fellowship in Healthcare Delivery Innovation at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and fellowship in Cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
Rohan Bhukar, BS (Computational Biologist)
Rohan is currently a computational biologist. He is working on leveraging large-scale genomics, multi-omics and clinical data to better understand cardiovascular disease and related traits. His prior work focused on computational methods for multi-omic data and applied machine learning to find patterns in ever-growing collection of biological data. He aims towards the goal of developing state-of-the-art methods to glean insights into the mechanisms of common and rare diseases. He completed his MS degree at Tech in Bioinformatics.
So Mi Jemma Cho, PhD (Post-doctoral Fellow)
Dr. Cho is currently a postdoctoral fellow. She is working on novel methods to characterize blood pressure trajectories and to improve management of hypertension, especially in young adults. She is supported by a grant of the Korea Health Technology R&D Project (HI19C123). Key research contributions include developing new approaches to appraise lifetime cardiovascular health, conducting a lifestyle modification-based randomized controlled trial, and quantifying risks associated with hypertension subtypes. She completed her PhD degree at Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul.
Katharine Clapham, MD (University of Utah Assistant Professor) 
Katharine Clapham is an Assistant Professor of Cardiology and Pulmonary Hypertension specialist at the University of Utah. She is interested in genetic contributions to vascular disease, with a special interest in pulmonary vascular disease.
Nicholas DaRosa, BS (Clinical Research Coordinator)
Nick is currently a clinical research coordinator at the Natarajan Lab. He is researching risk factors for blood pressure among women. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Biology and Community Health from Tufts University in May of 2023.
Courtney DeFusco, MSN-NP(Nurse Practitioner)
Courtney is currently a Nurse Practitioner at Massachusetts General Hospital who works in Advanced Heart Failure & Transplant in addition to being the Nurse Practitioner on the PCORI Hypertension Research Study. Prior to her research work at the Natarajan Lab, Courtney had also worked in interventional cardiology and vascular medicine, women’s health/ infertility and internal medicine. Courtney completed her Master of Science in Nursing at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and her Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Jacqueline Dron, PhD (Post-doctoral Fellow)
Dr. Dron is currently a post-doctoral research fellow. She aims to leverage genomic and metabolomic data to better understand lipid traits and their nuanced relationship with heart disease. She is currently a CIHR Banting Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2021-2023) and an NHLBI BioData Catalyst Fellow (2021-2022). Key research contributions include advancing the understanding of the genetic basis of hypertriglyceridemia, with a particular emphasis on polygenic factors. She completed her PhD. degree in Biochemistry at Western University (Canada).
Akl Fahed, MD (Instructor)
Dr. Fahed is currently interventional cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Fahed is working on the intersection of genomics and coronary imaging to improve prediction/prevention and understand mechanisms of coronary artery disease. Key research contributions include showing that monogenic disease can be modified by polygenic background, describing cross-ancestry transferability and optimal patient reporting of polygenic score for coronary artery disease, and identifying novel genotype/phenotype associations in monogenic cardiovascular disease.
Phoebe Finneran, BS (Western University of Health Sciences Medical Student)
Phoebe is a medical student at Western University of Health Sciences and is interested in women’s cardiovascular health and preventive medicine. Prior to medical school, she worked as a clinical research coordinator in the Natarajan Lab, where she conducted clinical research in genomics and digital health. Phoebe completed her undergraduate degree at Northeastern University with a major in biology.
Alyssa Monica Flores, MD (MGH Vascular Surgery Resident)
Alyssa graduated from Dartmouth Medical School and completed research fellowships in the Harvard NIH T35 program and at Stanford through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her research aims to use genomics and machine learning to study vascular diseases in diverse populations, with a focus on historically underrepresented groups in order to advance discovery efforts that serve patients from all ancestries.
Shriie Ganesh, BS (Clinical Research Coordinator)
Shriie works in the management of daily operations for patient-facing research studies. Shriie received her Bachelor of Science in Biology from the College of William & Mary in the May of 2022.
Sara Haidermota, BS (Project Manager)
Sara started working as a Clinical Research Coordinator in the Natarajan Lab in November 2019. She works on the development and day-to-day operations of studies involving applications of digital health technology. She also manages the regulatory aspects of genomic research projects focused on cardiovascular disease and clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential.
Michael Honigberg, MD MPP (MGH Cardiologist)
Dr. Michael Honigberg, MD, MPP, FACC, is a cardiologist-investigator at MGH, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Dr. Honigberg graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from Princeton University, received his MD from Harvard Medical School, trained in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and completed cardiovascular medicine fellowship at MGH. His research program integrates epidemiology, human genetics, multi-omics approaches, imaging, and community-based research to improve cardiovascular disease prevention with a particular focus on addressing unique risk factors in women. Major specific areas of research focus include mechanisms linking hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (e.g., preeclampsia, gestational hypertension) and premature age of menopause onset to later-life cardiovascular disease; clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate (CHIP), the age-related expansion of hematopoietic stem cells harboring preleukemic driver mutations in apparently healthy individuals; and interventions to address disparities in cardiovascular disease prevention. His work includes first- and/or senior-author publications in JAMA, Nature Medicine, Nature Cardiovascular Research, Circulation, JACC, JAMA Cardiology, Circulation Research, European Heart Journal, BMJ, and the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Honigberg is supported by the National Institutes of Health and American Heart Association. He is the recipient of the Jeremiah Stamler Distinguished Young Investigator Award from the Northwestern Cardiovascular Young Investigators’ Forum and the American College of Cardiology’s 2023 Douglas P. Zipes Distinguished Young Scientist Award.
Whitney Hornsby, PhD (Associate Director)
Dr. Hornsby is the lab’s Associate Director. Whitney is responsible for helping to direct the scientific strategy and scientific communication of the lab, while also supporting all lab members across a diverse range of clinical, genomics, and bioinformatic projects. She is leading work on PRIMED, OurHealth, and polygenic risk score clinical implementation, as well as assisting with data management for the UKBB, TOPMed, All of Us, and MGBB. Whitney joins the Natarajan Lab after 8 years as a staff scientist at Michigan Medicine under the supervision of Dr. Cristen Willer. She completed her doctorate at Indiana University and performed a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University Medical Center.
Romario Joseph
Romario’s current position is as a Clinical Research Coordinator. He is interested in public health and improving the health of underserved populations in my community and beyond. My undergraduate degree will be completed in the spring of 2024 at UMB. Then, I will begin my MHA at Boston College in the autumn of 2024. He worked as a Project Intern at Dana Farber Harvard Cancer Institute and as a Healthcare Assistant at Revere City Hall. And Romario worked in MGH’s Patient Access Services, where my primary responsibility was to provide high-quality patient access services to patients, clinicians, and payers throughout their MGH healthcare experience.
Amanda Jowell, MD (MGH Medical Resident )
Dr. Jowell is an internal medicine resident at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her clinical and research interests include preventive cardiology, medical education, and advancing health equity. She conducts research on sex-specific cardiac risk factors, polygenic risk scores/genomics, and the relationship between adverse pregnancy outcomes and cardio-metabolic disease. Amanda completed her undergraduate degree in molecular and cellular biology at Harvard College and her medical degree at Harvard Medical School. In her free time, she enjoys running, hiking, spending time with her family, and learning to bake bread.
Himani Kamineni, (MIT Undergraduate Student)
Himani is an undergraduate student at MIT. She is working on integrating single-cell RNA sequencing and genome-wide association analyses to detect causal genes.
Meghana Kamineni, BS (HMS Medical Student)
Meghana is a medical student at Harvard Medical School. She is working on using machine learning techniques to identify splenic features in abdominal MRIs that are associated with increased risk for coronary artery disease.
Nina Kathiresan (University of Pennsylvania Undergraduate)
Nina, currently a student at the University of Pennsylvania, is working as a research intern in the Natarajan Lab. Nina will aim to relate natural-occurring genetic variation with phenotypic outcomes in the Mass General Brigham Biobank, assist in designing and implementing a new cohort for biomedical research, and participate in patient-facing prospective clinical studies evaluating the clinical utility of digital health tools.
Soo Hyun (Francesca) Kim, BSH MS (HST student)
Francesca is currently a medical student in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST) Program. Francesca is working on combining machine learning, imaging, and genomic data to study the genetics underlying retinal disorders. Prior research contributions include the development of minimally invasive interfaces to optogenetically stimulate deep brain structures and the heart. Francesca completed her master’s degree in Computer Science and bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Computation at Stanford University.
Satoshi Koyama, MD PhD (Post-doctoral Fellow) also a member of the Ellinor Lab
Dr. Koyama is a physician-scientist specializing in cardiovascular diseases and works as a postdoctoral associate in the Broad Institute and MGH from January 2021. His research interest is in elucidating the causes and modifiers of cardiovascular diseases utilizing the biomedical large-scaled dataset generated by high-throughput assay systems and its clinical application.
Kim Lannery, BS (Clinical Research Coordinator)
Kim is currently a clinical research coordinator (CRC) in the Natarajan Lab. Kim is part of a few active studies including a study that aims to improve the way patients monitor their blood pressures outside of a clinical space. Kim completed a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry at Wheaton College, MA in May of 2021.
Jiwoo Lee, BS MS – (HMS Medical Student) also a member of the Ganna Lab
Jiwoo is currently a Harvard Medical School student in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST) Program working in the Natarajan Lab at the Broad and the Ganna group at FIMM. She is currently working on integrating genomic and metabolomic data to predict cardiovascular disease. Prior research contributions include (1) studying clinical conditions and their impact on the utility of genetic scores for the prediction of acute coronary syndrome and (2) quantifying the causal impact of cardiovascular risk factors on healthcare costs. Jiwoo completed her master’s in biomedical informatics and bachelor’s degree at Stanford.
Patricia Masson, PhD, RN, FAHA – (MGH Research Nurse)
Patricia’s research is focused on stroke prevention and hypertension, racism in nursing and healthcare theoretical model development. Her research aims are to develop models of care to address stroke risk of uncontrolled hypertension, advance diversity in nursing and address racism in nursing and complex theoretically model development.
Jack Miller, BS (Clinical Research Coordinator)
Jack is a clinical research coordinator at the Natarajan lab. He is currently working on a few active clinical drug trials focused on preventing and treating cardiovascular disease and corresponding risk factors. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Trinity College Hartford, CT in May 2021 and completed his Postbaccalaureate in Premedical Sciences from Columbia University in December 2023.
Anika Misra, BS (Computational Associate)
Anika is currently a computational biologist. She completed her undergraduate degree at Johns Hopkins where she studied computer science and molecular biology. Her prior work included method development and analysis of de novo mutations within large-scale datasets, as well as work on metagenomic software tools. She aims to develop integrative methods and tools that can further enable well-rounded analysis of multi-omic data.
Tetsushi Nakao, MD PhD (Post-doctoral Fellow) also member of the Ebert Lab
Dr. Nakao is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute. He is working on clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) and cardiovascular diseases by integrating wet and dry lab technologies. Key research contributions are the elucidation of the role of microRNA-33 on the abdominal aortic aneurysm and the relationship between CHIP, coronary artery disease, and telomere length. He completed clinical residency and cardiology fellowship in hospitals, including Kyoto University Hospital, Japan, then completed a PhD degree at the Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine. The Uehara Memorial Foundation (September 2018 ~ September 2020) and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (April 2022 ~ March 2024) support him. He completed his MD at Kyoto University.
Ohad Oren, MD (MGH Cardiology Fellow)
Dr Ohad Oren is currently a Cardiovascular Medicine fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Having previously trained in Hematology and Oncology at Mayo Clinic, Dr Oren has a special interest in clonal hematopoiesis and its effects on the cardiovascular system. Dr Oren hopes to take advantage of his cross-disciplinary expertise and utilize big data and genetic epidemiology to better understand the mechanisms underlying the heightened risk of cardiovascular disease in patients with clonal hematopoiesis.
Sarvesh Palaniappan (Boston University Undergraduate)
Sarvesh is currently a student in Boston University’s 7-year BA/MD program. He is working on a genetic analysis of anthropometric traits from the REPRIEVE study and comparing their profile to the traits in non-HIV subjects. Sarvesh is passionate about the interdisciplinary nature of medicine as it interacts with research, public policy, biotechnology, and more.
Michael Pan, (HMS Medical Student)
Michael Pan is currently a first-year medical student in the Pathways program at Harvard Medical School. Michael is working on understanding the relationship between metabolomics data and adiposity patterns. Key research contributions include the development of a bacterial voltage-gated sodium channels gene therapy to treat cardiac arrhythmias. Michael completed his bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering at Duke University.
Meaghan Parlee, BS (Broad Senior Project Coordinator)
Meaghan is currently a Senior Project Coordinator managing the regulatory aspects of genomic research projects at the Broad Institute. Her projects focus on cardiovascular disease. Meaghan completed a bachelor’s degree in Biology at Hamilton College, NY in May of 2021.
Kaavya Paruchuri, MD (Instructor)
Dr. Paruchuri’s clinical interests include general cardiology, cardiovascular prevention, and cardiovascular rehabilitation. She has worked on several digital health endeavors including optimizing telemedicine workflows, implementing smartphone-based applications, wearable monitor utilization in patient care, and disease management platform development. She also works on cardiovascular genomics in several biobanks including the MGB Biobank.
Aniruddh Patel, MD (Instructor)
Dr. Patel is a cardiologist at MGH focused on multi-modal cardiovascular risk prediction. He graduated from the Yale University School of Medicine and completed clinical training in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at MGH. His current research focuses on integrating genetics, biomarkers, and racial/ethnicity into disease prediction, with a particular interest in understanding cardiovascular risk among South Asian individuals.
Sarah Pitafi, MA (Research Assistant)
Sarah Pitafi is a research assistant in the Natarajan Lab who aims to conduct outreach for OurHealth. Sarah is a first-year medical student at Harvard who holds an MA from University College London and a BA from Yale University.
Dasha Postupaka, BA (Clinical Research Coordinator)
Dasha is currently a clinical research coordinator in the Natarajan Lab. She is involved in patient recruitment, data handling, and overall management. She completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology at Wellesley College in May of 2021 and is currently enrolled in the Premedical Program at the Harvard Extension School. Her previous work focused on the development of non-invasive gastrointestinal medical devices at MGH supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Ashley Pournamdari, MD (UCLA Medical Resident)
Dr. Pournamdari is currently a post-doctoral researcher and master’s student in the Stanford Biomedical Informatics Program. She aims to better understand how clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) may contribute to the development of coronary artery disease (CAD). She is currently working on understanding how tissue specific regulatory mechanisms, particularly the spleen, may drive CAD. Ashley’s work is supported by the NLM at the NIH (T-15 LM007033-39). Ashley completed her medical degree at the University of California, San Francisco and is currently a resident in internal medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Pradeep Rajendran, MD (MGH Medical Resident)
Dr. Rajendran is an internal medicine resident in the Stanbury Physician-Scientist Pathway at MGH. His prior research is in neural regulation of cardiovascular function.
Ashvita Ramesh, MD (MGH Medical Resident)
Dr. Ramesh is a PGY-1 in Internal Medicine at MGH. She graduated from Northwestern University with a BS in Biomedical Engineering and stayed on at Feinberg for medical school. She is an aspiring physician-innovator who enjoys thinking and working at the intersection between healthcare, technology, and quality improvement. Over the past eight years, she has worked on several medical devices, including a cuffless blood pressure monitor and a wearable biosensor that can detect blood flow through an AV fistula. She has most recently led a CARDIA study analyzing the correlation between longitudinal CRP trajectories in early age and atherosclerosis in middle age, which has furthered her interest in the field of preventive cardiology. She is specifically interested in learning more about utilizing genomics and biomarkers to better understand the process of atherosclerosis and is very excited to continue learning in this space.
Akshaya Ravi (Harvard College Undergraduate)
Akshaya is currently an undergraduate student at Harvard College studying Chemical & Physical Biology and Computer Science. She is currently working on analyzing genetic data from the UK Biobank in relation to various metabolomic biomarkers.
Rachel Rivera – (Yale University Undergraduate)
Rachel is a rising junior from Yale University, majoring in Biophysics and Biochemistry, concentrating in chemical biology. Rachel is a part of the 2023 Broad Summer Research Program where she will spend her time developing an atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk prediction model under supervision of Jemma Cho.
Christopher Robinson, BS (HMS Student)
Christopher is currently a first-year medical student at Harvard Medical School. He is working to apply techniques in big data to understand better the extent to which the social determinants of health explain variance in CAD risk. He completed his bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering at Mississippi State University.
Yunfeng Ruan, PhD (Post-doctoral Fellow)
Dr. Ruan completed a doctorate in Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King’s College London under the supervision of Dr. Paul F. O’Reilly and came to the Broad Institute in 2019 as a postdoc. She is interested in applying novel genetic prediction methods in various scenarios to help in basic research and clinical practice.
Tinamarie Sanborn RN (Clinical Research Nurse)
Tinamarie is currently a Research Nurse | Exercise Physiologist in the Natarajan Lab and the Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Center at MGH. Tinamarie contributes to our projects related to digital health in the care delivery process with a focus on disease management, lifestyle medicine, and cardiovascular prevention. Tinamarie operates our cardiopulmonary exercise testing lab while providing clinical support to participants in our clinical research studies. Tinamarie completed her bachelor’s degree in exercise science at the University of New Hampshire (2003) and a bachelor’s degree in nursing at Curry College (2011).
Amy Sarma, MD (MGH Cardiologist)
Dr. Sarma is an Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a cardiologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital Women’s Heart Health Program. Her clinical and research interests are in sex differences in cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular disease in pregnancy.
Margaret Sunitha Selvaraj, PhD (Post-doctoral Fellow)
Dr. Selvaraj is currently working as a bioinformatics researcher with MGH-Broad Institute. She is working on a TOPMed lipid genome analysis project, where the main aim of the study is to understand the common variant and rare variant aggregates associated with plasma lipids using large multi-ethnic cohorts with whole-genome sequenced data. Margaret is supported by R01HL142711 funded by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (HHS – NIH). She has worked on multiple projects in domains of protein structural bioinformatics, multi-omics data analysis, and genomics of lipids in huge cohorts. Margaret completed her PhD in Bioinformatics at National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and worked in Biocon Bristol-Myers Squibb Research & Development Center (BBRC) before joining the lab.
Adyant Shankar (Stanford University Undergraduate)
Adyant is an undergraduate student from New Hampshire studying at Stanford University. Apart from his passion for pursuing research in medicine and environmental science, he is a private pilot and enjoys learning about everything aviation.
Joseph Shin, MD PhD (MGB Cardiology Fellow)
Joseph Shin is currently a general cardiology fellow at MGH. He is exploring common genetic architecture of cardiomyopathy using TTE-based genomic association studies. He completed this MD/PhD in human genetics at Johns Hopkins under the mentorship of Hal Dietz, with whom he explored the epigenetic mechanisms of fibrosis. He completed his Internal Medicine residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Aeron Small, MD MTR (BWH Cardiology Fellow)
Dr. Small is a clinical cardiology fellow at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and post-doctoral research fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Broad Institute. He is broadly interested in the applications of omics data science to elucidate the pathobiology of valvular heart disease and cardiovascular calcification phenotypes. He is also interested in cardiovascular imaging and computational approaches to electronic health record phenotyping. He grew up in Chicago IL, completed his BS at Washington University in St. Louis, MD and MSTR (Master of Science in Translational Research) at the University of Pennsylvania, and internal medicine residency training at Yale University.
Catherine Spinks, BS MS (Genetic Counselor)
Catherine is currently a clinical research coordinator with the Natarajan Lab and practices as a genetic counselor in Australia. Catherine completed a Master of Genetic Counseling at The University of Sydney in 2012 and a Bachelors of Science at the University of Melbourne in 2012. Catherine has a keen interest in improving care for families with familial hypercholesterolemia. Catherine Is also interested in better understanding the underlying aetiology of a range of genetic heart diseases. Catherine will be working with the Natarajan team to help in discovering genomic contributions to sudden coronary artery dissection (SCAD).
Ida Surakka, PhD (Affiliated Faculty Member)
Ida works on complex disease discovery and prediction in both cross-sectional and longitudinal datasets.
Mark Trinder, BS MSc (UBC MD/PhD Student)
Mark is an MD/PhD candidate and Vanier Scholar at the University of British Columbia supervised by Dr. Liam Brunham. His work in the Natarajan Lab focuses on the influence of lipid phenotypes, such as lipoprotein(a) on both cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular diseases in diverse populations.
Michael Trinh, MD PhD (MGH Medical Resident)
Michael is an Internal Medicine resident in the Stanbury Physician-Scientist Pathway at MGH. He previously studied cholesterol metabolism during his MD/PhD at UT Southwestern, and is studying the genetics of cardiovascular disease.
Buu Truong, MD (Computational Associate)
Buu Truong is a Ph.D. student working at the Broad Institute in the Natarajan Lab and at the Price Lab at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. His primary research focuses on developing statistical methods for genomic studies and exploration of genetic architecture, such as genome-wide association study, polygenic risk scores, and gene-by-environment analysis. He is also interested in integrating GWAS with single-cell data to understand the genetic information of complex human traits and diseases.
Md Mesbah Uddin, PhD MSc (Post-doctoral Fellow)
Md Mesbah Uddin is currently a postdoc in the Natarajan Lab. He is working on identifying clonal hematopoiesis (CH) in individuals, understanding the role of CH in epigenetic changes, and illustrating genetic determinants of CH. His key research contributions in the lab include several co-authored publications (ORCID). Before joining the lab, Mesbah completed his PhD at Aarhus University (Denmark) and AgroParisTech (France), MS at King Abdulaziz University (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia), and BS at Khulna University (Khulna, Bangladesh).
Nishant Uppal, MD, MBA (BWH Medical Resident)
Dr. Uppal is an internal medicine resident at BWH. His scholarly work has focused on understanding health disparities faced by immigrant populations in the United States. He is interested in how refining estimates of cardiometabolic disease among South Asians can translate to health system redesign and payment reform that improve South Asian population health. He is currently working on assessing South Asian representation in cardiovascular randomized control trials in the US.
Sarah Urbut, MD PhD (MGH Cardiology Fellow)
Dr. Urbut is a cardiology fellow at MGH with a research interest in statistics, precision medicine, and genomics. Within cardiology, she hopes to adapt her experience in statistics to the wealth of genomic and clinical data to improve precision medicine approaches for individual patients. In her free time, she loves bicycling, spending time with friends and family, and rooting for her Chicago White Sox.
Lianet Vazquez, MD MA (MGH Medical Resident)
Dr. Vazquez is currently a resident physician in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, with a clinical interest in cardiology and critical care and a research interest in health disparities in access and cardiovascular-related outcomes among undocumented immigrants in the US and communities living in conflict settings abroad, namely Israel and Palestine. She is also interested in understanding genomic and phenomic predictors of morbidity and mortality from coronary artery disease. Prior to MGH, she was a medical student at Harvard Medical School and co-founder and president of Quetzales de Salud, a health navigation and accompaniment program to increase access to quality care for undocumented immigrants in the US.
Victoria Viscosi, MS (Clinical Research Coordinator)
Victoria specializes in patient recruitment, sample processing, and data management. Victoria completed her Bachelor’s degree in Biology at The University at Albany in May 2021 and received her Master’s degree in Medical Science at Boston University School of Medicine in May 2023.
Liying (Ariel) Xue, MS (Computational Associate)
Liying (Ariel) Xue is currently a computational associate II. She holds a Master’s degree in Bioinformatics from Boston University, where she specialized in mitochondrial genetics.
Zhi Yu, MB PhD (Post-doctoral Fellow)
Dr. Yu is a post-doctoral associate at the Broad Institute mentored by Drs. Natarajan and Finucane. Combining methods from epidemiology and statistics, her research focuses on integrating germline and somatic genomics and other “omics” data to study the cause and potential mechanism of cardiovascular disease.
S. Maryam Zekavat, MD/PhD (MEEI Ophthalmology Resident)
Dr. Zekavat is currently an Ophthamology resident at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Institute. Her work connects the cardiovascular system with the human eye by integrating retinal imaging data with electronic health records and genomics. She has been supported by two grants, NIH F30-HL149180-01, and a Leducq Foundation Early Career Investigator Award. Key research contributions have included whole genome sequencing analyses with lipids and early-onset myocardial infarction using the NHLBI’s TOPMed dataset and others, large-scale Mendelian randomization analyses using the UK Biobank dataset, phenome-wide analyses of somatic age-related genomic variants, and phenome- and genome-wide analyses of retinal imaging traits. Dr. Zekavat completed her BS in Biological Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her MD/PhD degree at Yale University.
Selena Zhang, BS (HMS Medical Student)
Selena is a student at Harvard Medical School and is interested in learning more about the genetic predictors of cardiovascular disease. She is currently working on identifying genetic variants associated with the albumin/globulin ratio and their related clinical implications. In her free time, she loves to run, salsa, make jewelry, and spend time outdoors with friends and family.
Roger Zou, MD, PhD (MGH Medical Resident)
Roger is an Internal Medicine resident in the Stanbury Physician-Scientist Pathway at MGH. He previously worked on genome editing during his MD/PhD at Johns Hopkins. He is working on cardiometabolic polygenic risk scores in patients with HIV.
