Hanieh Mazloom-Farsibaf, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Hanieh was born and raised in Mashhad, a city in the northeastern part of Iran. She received her M.Sc. in Physics from the Sharif University of Technology in Teheran, Iran. She completed her PhD in Physics at the University of New Mexico. During her PhD, she designed and built a 3D high-speed two-color single-particle tracking microscope to study the dynamics of membrane proteins involved in cell signaling. Additionally, she implemented a Bayesian inference approach to estimate the diffusion constant defined for confined Brownian motion of noisy observation. In the Danuser lab, she aims to leverage computational modeling of molecular processes to study cancer cells. In particular, she is fascinated by how cell shape directly controls signal transduction pathways, cell proliferation and survival. In her free time, she enjoys reading novels and hiking with family and friends, and playing challenging board games.
Gabriel Muhire Gihana, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher, HHMI Hanna Gray Fellow
Gabriel Muhire Gihana was born and raised in Rwanda, Africa. He completed his BS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from California Baptist University in 2013, and his Ph.D. in Genome Cell and Developmental Biology from Indiana University in 2019. His doctoral research investigated the mechanisms that coordinate cell division with cell polarity and morphogenesis in budding yeast. In the Danuser laboratory, Muhire Gihana studies the role of small GTPases and cellular morphogenesis in cancer cell growth and drug resistance. Outside the laboratory, he enjoys playing chess, singing, and participating in research outreach projects.
Hongqing Han, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Hongqing grew up in Harbin, Heilongjiang, China and completed his college and master's education at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China on automation and bioinformatics. Later he entered graduate school at Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Berlin, Germany and worked on live cell imaging data analysis. After acquiring a doctorate from Humboldt University of Berlin, he worked as a postdoc at University of Oxford, UK, where he segmented cellular ultrastructure in high-resolution volume microscopy images without using annotated training data. Here in the Danuser lab, Hongqing studies the intricate structures and dynamics of cells using imaging data and his computational skills. Outside of work, he likes soccer and video games.
Thuong Nguyen, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Thuong completed her Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Utah. She joined the Danuser and Rajaram labs with a joint appointment in 2022. Her research in Utah focused on developing adaptive central-upwind methods for shallow water models. She has been fascinated by computational methods, modeling, and machine learning and thus applied for a new training opportunity at UTSW, where she can leverage her mathematical insights in the context of machine learning of cell and tissue images. She is currently working on frameworks to explain the reasoning behind the decision-making ability of machine learning models, like feature importance and accumulated local effects. The understanding of such factors will enable the prediction of mechanisms in complex regulatory circuits both for the purpose of guiding experiments in the lab and treatment procedures in the clinic.
Felix Zhou, Ph.D.
Felix was born in Sichuan, China and grew up in the suburbs of Manchester in the United Kingdom. He completed a Masters in Engineering (MEng) from the University of Cambridge, UK in 2013. He then made the transition to computational biology for his doctoral studies under the EPSRC Life Sciences Doctoral Training Program at the University of Oxford, UK. He completed his Ph.D. in bioimaging in 2018. His doctoral thesis developed a motion analysis framework, MOtion SEnsing Superpixels (MOSES) to extract video-level phenotype descriptors for unbiased clustering and classification for live cell screening in 2D. In the Danuser laboratory, Felix continues to expand his live-cell imaging research into 3D. He is currently studying and developing computational techniques to infer causal relationships between stochastic molecular timeseries extracted from 3D live-cell microscopy. Outside the laboratory, he enjoys watching movies, anime, and playing board games.
Dagan Segal, Ph.D.
Dagan Segal was born in Rehovot, Israel. She received her B.S. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from UT Austin in 2008, her M.S. in Biology from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in 2012. Segal completed her Ph.D. in Biology from The Weizmann Institute of Science in 2017, under the supervision of Prof. Benny Shilo, where she studied the regulation of actin dynamics in the developing fruit fly. Currently, Dagan holds a joint appointment with the Danuser and Amatruda labs. Dagan was selected as an EMBO Long-Term Research Fellow in January 2019. Her work combines zebrafish and in vitro models to gain insight into how cells interact with varying microenvironments, especially in pediatric cancer. In her free time, she enjoys kayaking, hiking, and laughing.
Anteneh Asmare Godana, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Anteneh Asmare Godana was born and raised in Ethiopia, Africa. He completed his BSC in statistics from Arba Minch University, Ethiopia, in 2009, his MSC in applied statistics from Hawassa university, Ethiopia, in 2012, and his Ph.D. in statistics from the joint Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) and the Pan African University Institute for Basic Science and Technology and Innovations (PAUSTI), Kenya in 2019. His doctoral research was dynamic spatiotemporal modeling of visceral leishmaniasis in humans and investigated the determinants of visceral leishmaniasis in humans. In the Danuser laboratory, Anteneh Godana studies an extension of the existing SPAR-based Granger Causal Inference to a larger number of biological variables that will be able to establish methods to identify breaks in the causal structure of dynamic systems. Outside the laboratory, he enjoys playing football (aka soccer), watching soccer games, and participating in research activities and academic training.
Neha Iyer, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Neha Iyer was born and raised in Mumbai, India. She received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Biotechnology from the University of Mumbai. She completed her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of North Texas in 2021. During her Ph.D., she created a blood disorder model for von Willebrand disease (VWD) in zebrafish using CRISPR/Cas9 and identified the zebrafish ortholog for human F9 gene using the piggyback knockdown method. Additionally, she also conducted a genome wide screen of glycosyltransferases to identify unknown modifiers of the VWF protein. In the Danuser lab, she will apply her technical skills and knowledge to identifying and studying altered mechanisms related to leukemia using zebrafish as well as in vitro models of cancer. Outside the lab, she enjoys spending time with her family, doing arts, craft and watching movies.
