Group Members

We are looking for new Postdocs to join the team (see openings) !

Staff

Principal Investigator
email: szj2001@med.cornell.edu

Steven Josefowicz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Division of Experimental Pathology. Steven has appointments in the Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis (IMP) Program and the Physiology, Biophysics, and Systems Biology (PBSB) Program. After a BA from UC Berkeley and three years as a research tech working in the area of human immunology and HIV at UCSF, Steve conducted his graduate work with Alexander Rudensky at the University of Washington and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. His PhD work focused on mechanisms of immune tolerance and the differentiation and function of regulatory T cells-- how our powerful immune systems can so effectively combat pathogens while tolerating our own tissues, food, and commensal microbiota. He then joined the laboratory of C. David Allis at The Rockefeller University to study epigenetic mechanisms underlying cellular differentiation and stimulation events in the immune system. Joining Weill Cornell Medicine in May 2017, his ongoing work in his lab combines the fields of epigenetics and immunology to focus on questions of epigenetic regulation of transcription, especially as it pertains to rapid cellular responses, namely immune cell responses to stimulatory cues. The goal is to reveal fundamental epigenetic mechanisms regulating inflammation and their activity in pediatric and adult inflammatory disease.

Postdoctorate Fellow
email: alm2806@med.cornell.edu

Alexia joined the lab in April 2018 after completing her PhD thesis at the University of Barcelona, Spain, and a short postdoctoral training at the University of Victoria, Canada. During that time, she was studying different mechanisms of epigenetic regulation, such as DNA and histone methylation, with a special interest in chromatin and transcriptional dynamics of neurons upon receiving activation signals or circadian cues. In the Josefowicz lab, Alexia is studying epigenetic mechanisms and chromatin structural changes controlling transcription in the immune response and their dysregulation in cancer.

Research Specialist
email: lup4006@med.cornell.edu

Lucinda joined the lab as an undergraduate intern while attending Harvey Mudd College, then started her full-time position in 2022. She is a computational biologist specializing in single-cell analysis, with a particular interest in studying epigenetic regulation of hematopoiesis in health and disease.

Senior Bioinformatics Analyst
email: rer4011@med.cornell.edu

IMP Graduate Student
email: awd2001@med.cornell.edu

Andrew got his bachelors in Chemistry and Biochemistry from Seattle Pacific University. He got a job working in an cancer immunology lab, where he stayed for three years before deciding to pursue a PhD at Weill Cornell. Andrew joined the Josefowicz lab in 2018 to work on understanding the role of histone modifications in hematopoietic development.

IMP Graduate Student
email: dja4001@med.cornell.edu

Dughan grew up in the beautiful state of New Jersey and went on to receive a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Yale University. He then spent two years working in biotech before deciding to attend Weill Cornell’s IMP Program for graduate school. Dughan joined the Josefowicz Lab in June 2019 to study the function of histone modifications in rapid stimulation-induced gene expression and other epigenetically regulated processes in mammalian immunity.

BCMB Graduate Student
email: chj4004@med.cornell.edu

Chenyang received her B.S. in biological sciences from Sichuan University and M.S. in pathobiology from University of Connecticut. After graduation, she worked as a research assistant for three years at Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, Harvard, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital to study HIV/AIDS by developing and applying novel genetic and epigenetic tools to characterize viral reservoirs in HIV-1 elite controllers. Chenyang joined the Josefowicz Lab in July 2021 to investigate epigenetic regulation of transcription in rapid stimulation-induced immune cell responses.

Tri-I CBM Graduater Student
email: mke4001@med.cornell.edu

Mythili received her B.S. in Biochemistry/Molecular Biology from University of California, Santa Barbara in 2023. While completing her bachelor's degree, she worked as a researcher in the Ramani Lab at UC San Francisco for three years using computational methods to study chromatin remodeling and histone modifications regulating mammalian gene expression. She then began her PhD in the Tri-Institutional Computational Biology and Medicine program as an NSF graduate fellow. Mythili joined the Josefowicz Lab in May 2024 to apply and expand upon computational approaches to study epigenetics (co-advised by Dr. Christina Leslie), with a particular focus on the mechanisms underlying development and activation of immune populations.

IMP Graduate Student
email: mib4004@med.cornell.edu

Michael received his B.A.s in Chemistry and Physics from the University of Kentucky in 2016 and a M.Sc. in Bioinformatics at Johns Hopkins University in 2020. During his masters, Michael was a post-baccalaureate research fellow at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland in the Translational Research Unit of the HIV Dynamics and Replication program where he worked on profiling integration site distributions in children living with HIV as well as intra-participant HIV-1 genetics. Michael joined the Josefowicz lab in July of 2021 to investigate the role of epigenetic regulation in the activation and memory differentiation of T cells.