Department of Molecular Biology & Genetics
227 Biotechnology Bldg, 526 Campus Rd, Ithaca NY 14853-2703
Contact Andy at: ac347(at)cornell.edu
Phone: 607-255-0527 Fax: 607-255-6249
Research Associates/Sr. Research Associates
Elissa joined the Clark Lab in September 2014 as a Research Associate. Before joining the Clark Lab, she completed her PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Boston University, and then worked at Amgen as a Bioinformatics Scientist in Oncology Lead Discovery. She conducts computational analysis for several ongoing projects in the lab, and provides general computational support for group members. She is an enthusiastic R user.
Contact Elissa at: ejc87(at)cornell.edu
Post Docs
Mehrnaz received her B.S. in Animal Biology and M.S. in Biosystematics from the University of Tehran working on intertidal crabs. She received her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Oklahoma in 2024. She is interested in how species diversify, especially through female reproductive behavior, and how sensory cues received by the female reproductive tract during and after mating contribute to speciation. Her PhD research focused on the development of Drosophila male genitalia and the female response to the changes in male genital morphology. She joined the Clark and Wolfner Labs in 2024 where she is investing female molecules that interact with the male seminal fluid components and sperm.
Contact Mehrnaz at: ma2438(at)cornell.edu
Jolie completed her B.S. in Microbiology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2015 and went on to complete a Ph.D. in Genome Sciences at the University of Washington in 2021. During her Ph.D. she was advised by Dr. Willie Swanson and investigated the evolution and function of fertilization genes. Specifically, she biochemically characterized how the rapid divergence of interacting sperm and egg fertilization proteins leads to species-specific gamete recognition in the model organism abalone. She joined the Clark and Wolfner Labs in 2022 where she is investing male-female molecular interactions mediating reproduction in Drosophila. Specifically, she is investigating how genetic variation in D. melanogaster females affects female mating plug ejection timing and is investigating the evolution and function of male and female mating plug proteins.
Contact Jolie at: jac655(at)cornell.edu
Peiwei got his B.Sc. in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 2017 and his Ph.D. in Biology from California Institute of Technology in 2024. He is broadly interested in intragenomic conflicts, genetic innovations, sexual dimorphism, and molecular evolution. During his PhD, he worked on sexual dimorphism and evolutionary innovation of the piRNA/PIWI pathway, which controls the expression of transposons and other selfish genetic elements in animals. Excited to learn population genetics and evolutionary genomics, he joined the Clark Lab and the Feschotte Lab in fall, 2024. Now he is doing experimental evolution, phylogenomic survey, and genetic screens to answer questions at the intersection of molecular biology, organismal biology, and evolutionary biology.
Contact Peiwei via peiwei(at)cornell.edu, or find him on Twitter/X@peiwei_chen
Arielle received her B.A. in Biology (Concentration in Ecology and Evolution) from the University of Pennsylvania in 2014 and her Ph.D. in Genetics and Genomics from Duke University in 2022. She is fascinated by the evolution and diversity of social behavior across animal species and broadly interested in how evolutionary processes influence social behavior and reciprocally, how social behavior influences evolutionary processes. To tackle these questions, Arielle integrates lab, field, and computational methods to understand the dynamics between behavior, genomes, and evolutionary processes in natural populations. Her graduate research approached these questions in a wild population of hybrid baboons. She joined the Clark Lab in 2023 and is currently focusing on a wide range of topics including pedigree inference, demography, hybridization, and sperm competition in wild equids.
Contact Arielle at asf224(at)cornell.edu, check out her website, or follow her on Twitter.
Sushant completed his B.Sc in Chemistry, Environmental Science, and Zoology from Bangalore University in 2014 and his M.Sc. in Environmental Studies and Resource Management from TERI University, New Delhi in 2016. After working as a project assistant in NCBS Bangalore for two years, he went on to complete his PhD in Biology from University of Arkansas in 2024. During his PhD, he investigated the causes and consequences of behavioral plasticity, from an anti-predatory behavior angle, as well as from a mate preference angle in tropical butterflies. Specifically, he investigated whether tropical Heliconius butterflies changed their behavior in response to their predatory bird calls. He also mapped the neurogenomic responses of individual mate preference learning behavior and the spermatophore proteomic characterizations in response to individual past experiences. He is fascinated by behavioral plasticity and the underlying mechanisms of how behaviors develop, and integrates field, lab, and computational techniques in understanding the intricacies of animal behavior. He joined the Clark and Wolfner labs in July 2024 to understand the effects of mating on female physiology and behavior, and specifically to map out the neural connections between the reproductive tracts and the brain that drive female post-mating responses.
Contact Sushant at: sp2629(at)cornell.edu; check out his website at Sushant Potdar Website or follow him on X (twitter) at @sushant_potdar
Graduate Students
Katelyn grew up in Grand Forks, ND and then moved to Philadelphia, PA to complete her bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania, where she double majored in Molecular & Cell Biology and Classical Studies. During that time, she worked in Michael Lampson’s lab studying epigenetic inheritance and evolution of centromere proteins. As a GGD student at Cornell, she is co-advised by Cedric Feschotte and Andy Clark. She is broadly interested in how rapidly evolving genetic elements can shape conserved, essential processes. Her current research combines developmental genetics and evolutionary genomics to test the role of transposable elements in Drosophila development and learn more broadly about the dynamics of conflict and cooperation between transposons and their host genome.
Contact Katelyn at kgb54(at)cornell.edu
You is a PhD student in the field of Genetics, Genomics, and Development and is co-advised by Dr. Haiyuan Yu. She did her undergraduate at Zhejiang University majoring in Clinical Medicine. She earned a master degree in Neurology at ZJU, focusing on the identification of causative genes for movement disorders and hereditary neurological diseases. She is broadly interested in the genetic basis of human diseases, regulatory genome, and population genetics. Her current research focuses on the evolution and architecture of transcriptional regulatory elements to unravel how they encode intricate programs of gene expression in normal and disease states.
Contact You at: yc2553(at)cornell.edu
Mitch has a great interest in all things evolutionary. During his undergraduate at the University of Utah he worked in an anthropological population genetics lab estimating timing and rate of archaic admixture, graduated 2016. After undergraduate he steered more molecular and studied gene regulatory effects and selection of transposable elements at the Eccles Institute of Human Genetics. Fall 2018 Mitch joined the Genetics, Genomics, & Development field at Cornell and entered the labs of Profs Andy Clark and Philipp Messer Summer 2019. His current research interests lie at the interface of evolution and disease. By studying how segregating variants in the human population affect the interactome and modeling the evolutionary dynamics of such variants he hopes to help strengthen our understanding of the effects of deleterious variants.
Contact Mitch at: mitch.lok3(at)gmail.com
Ben is a PhD student in the field of Genetics, Genomics and Development (GGD) co-advised with Dan Barbash. He graduated in 2021 from Reed College, where his undergraduate thesis focused on improving species concept for members of Entoloma subgenus Leptonia, a rare and poorly studied group of mushroom-forming fungi. After graduation, he came to Cornell to work as a research technician in the Barbash lab, where he used Drosophila to examine mechanisms underlying hybrid incompatibilities and develop methods to screen for evidence of meiotic drive in natural populations. In Spring 2024, Ben joined the Barbash and Clark labs, where he plans to study the mechanisms and population dynamics of drive and suppression using a mix genetic, molecular biology, and computational approaches.
Contact Ben at: bm545(at)cornell.edu
Satyam (he/him) is a PhD student and is co-advised by Andy Clark and Cedric Feschotte. Before coming to Cornell, he worked in Nelson Lau’s lab on structural variation in P-elements and its impact on hybrid dysgenesis in D. melanogaster. He did his undergrad at University of Houston and did his honors thesis in Erin Kelleher’s lab on natural variation in P-element induced hybrid dysgenesis. He’s broadly interested in co-evolution of transposable elements and small RNA pathways that repress them in animals. His current research focuses on the evolution of piRNA clusters and other small non-coding RNAs that repress transposable elements in flies and fish. His research employs a combination of computational, genetic and molecular biology methods.
Contact Satyam at: sps257(at)cornell.edu
Shane is a PhD student in the field of Genetics, Genomics, and Development. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 2021 with a BS in Biology with a specialization in genetics. For his honors thesis, he studied the molecular effects of cancer associated disruptions to splicing. He is broadly interested in genomic architecture and how genetic variation leads to phenotypic effects. His current research focuses on the variation in the heterochromatic regions of the Y chromosome to unravel how they lead to genome wide expression differences.
Contact Shane at: sfw46(at)cornell.edu
Freddie (he/him) is a PhD student in the Field of Genetics, Genomics, and Development and is co-advised by Andy Clark and Dan Barbash. Before joining the Clark Lab in 2021, he earned his B.S. in Evolutionary Biology from Duke University (and also majored in Political Institutions). During undergrad, Freddie worked in Mohamed Noor’s lab, studying the effect of sexual selection on male sex combs via female choice in Drosophila simulans. His current research interests range from the evolutionary dynamics of sex chromosomes to sex determination systems. Freddie plans to tackle these questions through both traditional and computational genetics approaches.
Contact Freddie at: fmx2(at)cornell.edu
Perry received her B.S in Biology from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing in 2022. She exchanged in UC Berkeley in 2021 and joined the Genetics, Genomics and development program at Cornell from 2022. Perry is co-advised by Dr. Jaehee Kim. She is interested in evolutionary biology and population genetics. Her recent research focuses on phylodynamics method development and its application to various biological and biomedical questions, including genomic epidemiology, cancer cell lineage tracing and transposable elements.
Contact Perry at: px54(at)cornell.edu
Technician & Lab Manager
Asha joined the Clark lab in August 2018 as a research technician. She is former member of Cornell’s Genomics Facility at the Institute of biotechnology and is experienced in a variety of Next-generation sequencing platforms and technologies, protocol development, and high-throughput genomics projects. She received her Bachelor’s from Tulane University as a dual major in Cell and molecular biology and Psychology with a focus on Neural sciences. Having worked with proteins, DNA, and RNA in a variety of applications, she is interested in experimental design and down-stream analysis of genomic data.
Contact Asha at: amj77(at)cornell.edu
Administrative Assistant
Lori joined the Clark lab in September 2009 as an Administrative Assistant to Dr. Clark and his research team. Lori’s background in financial management and experience with Cornell policies and processes, both in research and administration, helps to keep the lab running smoothly.
Lori is available Mon, Wed & Fri
Contact Lori at: ljb2(at)cornell.edu or 607-255-0533