Pam Recio and Lori Llaci have joined the Mitra Lab as graduate students.
Pam received a Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biology from California State University Monterey Bay. Her undergraduate research involved assessing the role that specific genes-LAC1 and LAG1- had in the cell cycle of budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. She is currently part of a yearlong ORG Post Bacc program and is specifically working on a collaboration between the Mitra and Brent labs. The goal of this project is to understand how gene expression is a function of transcription factor binding in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. She is currently applying to PhD programs and hopes to enroll in a Genetics program next fall. Her ultimate goal is to use science as a tool to better her community, especially those in underrepresented areas.
Lori Llaci, originally from Albania, moved to the United States to get her Bachelor of Science in biochemistry from Arizona State University. She worked in the Neurogenomics Division at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Dr. Vinodh Narayanan’s laboratory studying mitochondrial dysfunction in patients with epileptic encephalopathy where she discovered the beauty of clinical research. She decided to start graduate school at Washington University because of her interest to incorporate a bioinformatic approach to her work while applying it to clinical research and joined the Mitra lab because of their expertise in technology development. Her work will focus on understanding the epigenetics of sex differences in glioblastoma at a single cell level. In her free time, she likes to read, explore new cuisines, travel and play the piano.
Welcome, Pam and Lori!