Our Team



frank

Frank Pugh, PhD


Principal Investigator

We aim to discover molecular mechanisms of gene regulation. The lab studies how the transcription machinery assembles at promoters and the pivotal role that enhancers play in accelerating this assembly.

location: 465 Biotechnology Building
email: fp265@cornell.edu
CV:


Anne Gardner, PhD

Lab Manager

anne

Anne Gardner joined the Pugh lab in 2021 as Lab Manager. She is excited to be back at Cornell where she completed her undergraduate in Biology. She earned her PhD in Immunology at Duke University on immunoglobulin intracellular transport during B cell differentiation and did a postdoctoral fellowship at National Jewish Immunology focusing on MAP kinase signal transduction pathways.

location: 467 Biotechnology Building
email: amg246@cornell.edu
CV:
 
Joshua Wendall

Lab Technician

josh

Josh received his BS in Biology with the Neuroscience option from Penn State, shortly thereafter joining the Pugh Lab in December of 2022. As a technician, he has been exploring the use of mammalian tissue as a substrate for ChIP-exo.

location: 467 Biotechnology Building
email: jcw345@cornell.edu
CV:
 
Matthew McDermott

Lab Technician

matt

Matthew received his bachelor's degree in Viticulture and Enology from Cornell University. He is interested in the yeast and bacteria that are responsible for producing beer and wine. Since the production of beer and wine is stressful to yeast, Matthew has been studying where transcription factors are bound to DNA in yeast as a response to different stress factors using ChIP-exo.

location: 467 Biotechnology Building
email: mjm763@cornell.edu
 
Ruihao Li, PhD

Post Doctoral Scholar

ruihao

Ruihao completed his Bachelor's degree in Life Sciences at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2017. Following this, he pursued his PhD in Quantitative and Systems Biology at the University of California, Merced, graduating in 2023. Shortly after, he joined Pugh's lab as a postdoctoral fellow. He is committed to constructing mathematical models and developing computational tools to elucidate the intricate networking between transcription factors and genes.

location: 467 Biotechnology Building
email: rl884@cornell.edu
CV:
 
Haining Chen, PhD

Post Doctoral Scholar

haining

Haining Chen is a doctoral candidate in the Graduate Field of Biochemistry, Molecular, and Cell Biology (BMCB) Graduate Program at Cornell University. She received her Bachelor's degree in microbiology from Shandong University. In 2019, Haining joined the Pugh lab, and her current research focuses on unraveling the intricate molecular architectures of proteins implicated in transcription initiation and studying how transcription factors regulate gene expression in a cell-type-specific manner.

location: 460 Biotechnology Building
email: hc2228@cornell.edu
CV:
website:
 
Justin Cha

Graduate Student (CB)

justin

Justin Cha is a PhD student in the Computational Biology Program. He received his bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology before working as an Associate Computational Biologist in the Getz Lab at the Broad Institute. For the Pugh lab, he works on software development and high-throughput computing (HTC) for the analysis of sequencing data.

location: 460A Biotechnology Building
email: jsc333@cornell.edu
CV:
website:
 
Fred Fazan

Graduate Student (PBSB)

fred

Fred got his BS in Biomedical Sciences from the University of São Paulo and Master's in Pharmacology from the Federal University of São Paulo. He worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Iowa for two years before joining Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences PhD program in Physiology, Biophysics and Systems Biology. In the Pugh Lab, he works on the technical development of single cell ChIP-exo.

location: 460 Biotechnology Building
email: ff259@cornell.edu
CV:
 
Rebecca Soloway

Graduate Student (GGD)

rebecca

Rebecca received a BS in Biology from Cornell University, and has been working in science communication and conservation biology since graduation. As a graduate student in the Pugh Lab, she is interested in gene regulatory networks in yeast.

location: 460 Biotechnology Building
email: res336@cornell.edu
CV:
 
Jiayi Hu

Graduate Student (GGD)

jiayi

Jiayi Hu is a PhD student in the Genetics, Genomics, and Development Program at Cornell University. She received her bachelor's degree in Integrated Science at Peking University in China. She joined Pugh lab in 2024, focusing on understanding the dynamics of epigenomic architecture by chromatin reconstitution.

location: 460 Biotechnology Building
email: jh2792@cornell.edu
CV:
 
Kritika Grover

Graduate Student (CB)

kritika

Kritika Grover is a PhD student in the Computational Biology Program at Cornell University. She received her bachelor's degree from the University of Waterloo in Biochemistry and minored in computing.

location: 460A Biotechnology Building
email: kg573@cornell.edu
CV:
 
Zimo Zhu

Graduate Student (CB)

zimo

Zimo Zhu is a PhD student in the Computational Biology Program at Cornell University. She received her bachelor's degree from the University of Washington in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology with a minor in Data Science.

location: 404 Biotechnology Building
email: zz863@cornell.edu
CV:
 
 

Undergraduate Students



Benjamin Beer'28
Alima Dean'27
Tanya Gupta'26
Olivia Li'26
Shreya Majumdar'26
Pedro Vera Perez'25
Alex Veldran'26
Grace Wang'26
Ella Yang'27
 


OliviaLangGrad StudentComputational Biology2020-2025
PedroVera PerezUndergraduate2022-2025
HanqingLiUndergraduate2023-2025
DeanZhangUndergraduate2022-2025
BenjaminBeerUndergraduate2023-2024
JordanKrebsGrad StudentMSTP-Penn State (MD/PhD)2019-2024
CourtneyLeSonUndergraduate2022-2024
MihirRanjanUndergraduate2022-2024
Paula MarieBrownUndergraduate2022-2023
RebeccaKalikUndergraduate2023-2023
StevenWangStaff, Lab Technician2022-2023
Ben TerhaarUndergraduate2022-2023
WilliamTsaiHigh School Student2022-2022
DominicMatrasUndergraduate2022-2022
AlisaLeeGrad StudentGGD2020-2022
AliNematbakhshStaff, Computer Scientist2019-2022