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
Yassi joined the Clark lab in April, 2016 and is broadly interested in reproductive biology and fitness. She is currently working to understand the function and evolution of genes on the Y chromosome in Drosophila, which serve as a model for how and why many important genes across species carry out important functions from regions of the genome that are epigenetically silenced in all cells. She uses CRISPR genome editing and the myriad of advanced genetic tools available in Drosophila melanogaster. She earned her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from U.C. Berkeley in 2011. Her past research was on mechanisms that regulate tissue and cellular growth and cell competition in the Drosophila ovary and larval imaginal discs.
Contact Yassi at: yhafezi(at)gmail.com
Post Docs
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
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.
Graduate Students
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
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
Yoko (she/her) is a PhD student in the field of Genetics, Genomics and Development and is co-advised by Mariana Wolfner. She graduated from UC Davis in 2020 with a BS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. As an undergraduate, she was interested in tracking the evolution of different sex cells in the accessory gland in the genus Drosophila. Broadly, she is interested in modeling reproductive outcomes as pairwise competitions to dissect the seemingly complexities that exist in reproduction. She is also looking at male derived exosome variation that are produced by the cells in the accessory gland and asking how this variation affects reproduction. She aims to identify and characterize key genes and regulators that are associated with exosomes ability to influence fertility and reproduction.
Contact Yoko at: yt366(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
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