Ronald L Neppl, Ph.D.   |  Principal Investigator

Ron received his B.S. and M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Marquette University. He then worked in industry for a few years before returning to academia. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in Biophysics, where under the mentorship of Drs. Andrew and Avril Somlyo, he studied signal transduction in vascular smooth muscle. For his postdoctoral research, he then joined the laboratory of Dr. Da-Zhi Wang at Boston Children's Hospital where he focused on studying the roles of microRNAs and novel proteins that modulate the activity of the RNA Induced Silencing Complex in cardiac and skeletal muscle. He then moved to the laboratory of Dr. Kenneth Walsh and focused on long non-coding RNAs that modulate skeletal muscle growth processes before joining the faculty in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

 

Eleonora Guagadnin, Ph.D.  |  Postdoctoral Fellow

Eleonora received her B.S. M.Sc. in Medical Biotechnologies from the University of Padova in Italy. She then interned in Dr. Marco Sandri’s lab at the Venetian Institute for Molecular Medicine in Padova, where she studied the role of mitochondrial remodeling in skeletal muscle atrophy. She then joined the laboratory of Dr. Yi-Wen Chen at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where she studied the effects of TGFβ1 on skeletal muscle mass. She received her Ph.D. in Veterinary Sciences from the University of Padova under the mentorship of Dr. Carsten Bonnemann at the National Institutes of Health where she studied the transcriptional events responsible for onset and progression of Collagen type VI-related muscular dystrophy. Currently, she is focused on uncovering the roles of lncRNAs in the regulation of myogenesis and hypertrophic growth.

 

Benjamin Mason, B.S.  |  Technician

Ben is a recent graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering. While at RPI, he conducted research on the use of electrospun fibers as guidance scaffolds for neurite growth. In addition, he has experience in the application of protein engineering methodologies towards improving the specificity and efficacy of antibodies used in oncology therapeutics. In the future he hopes to pursue a P.h.D in Biomedical Engineering.

 

Debalina Bagchi, Ph.D.  |  Postdoctoral Fellow

Debalina received her BS, with a minor in chemistry and zoology and MS degree, in Botany with a specialization in cell and molecular biology from the University of Calcutta, India. She then joined the University of Virginia, Charlottesville to pursue her graduate research in molecular endocrinology under the mentorship of Dr.Margaret Shupnik. Her graduate research focused on investigating the transcriptional regulation of LHβ gene that encodes the β-subunit of the female reproductive hormone LH. After receiving her PhD degree from the University of Virginia, she briefly worked at a start-up company, Ampel Biosolutions, studying molecular pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases. Debalina then moved to the Dept. of surgery at UVA where she investigated the genomic and epigenomic changes during ischemia reperfusion injury in liver transplant patients. She joined Neppl research group as a postdoctoral fellow in 2018. Her projects involve generating modified RNAs relevant to muscle biology aimed towards RNA-based therapeutics and investigating the role of lncRNAs in cardiac myogenesis.

 

Lab Alumni

Gargi Chaudhuri, Ph.D. - Postdoctoral Fellow - Scientist at Abcam

Hammad Sadiq - Musculoskeletal Research Summer Intern, Brigham Research Institute (Summer 2018) - Worcester Polytechnic Institute 

 

Fun Stuff

Kings Bowling - August 2018