Lab Members

Dr. Mehdi Eshraghi joined the Subramaniam Lab in September 2017, as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. He obtained his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Ottawa where he studied Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), a genetic neurodegenerative disease of the lower motor neurons. Mehdi studied how mRNA translation is affected in Huntington’s Disease and how the lack of several striatum specific genes affects L-Dopa Induced Dyskinesia (LID).

Dr. Sumitha Rajendra Rao joined the lab as a Research Associate. She obtained a dual PhD from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, India and Maastricht University, The Netherlands. While in the Subramaniam Lab, her interest was to harness the potentials of stem cells to study the pathogenic mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative diseases. Sumitha's thesis work was on the rat model of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and developing an in-vitrodisease model using Human Embryonic Stem Cells to understand the multifaceted disease mechanisms. She was involved in disease modeling in a dish for Huntington Disease using HD Embryonic Stem Cells and patients’ fibroblasts. Her main focus was to unveil the role of aberrant mTORC1 signaling contributing to the disease. 

Oscar Rivera joined the Subramaniam Lab as an Undergraduate Reseach Technician. He is a U.S. Marine who served as an infantryman for four years, and became a private investigator soon after his honorable discharge from the service. He worked in insurance fraud and domestic cases throughout the states of Florida, South Carolina and North Carolina. Oscar was wrapping up his undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at FAU, and with the aid of Dr. Subramaniam, he has secured an NIH grant; which supported his goal of furthering our understanding of the underlying molecular factors that lead to Huntington's Disease

Vincenzo Andrew Giovinazzo was an Undergraduate Student of the FAU Honor’s College with a concentration in Neuroscience. He conducted his thesis research at Scripps under the tutelage and direction of Dr. Srini Subramaniam. His thesis, “Dissecting the Stability of Rhes; a striatal protein involved in Huntington’s disease,” aimed to elucidate the degradation pathway of the Rhes protein. He is pursuing a career in medicine.

Jensen Wong joined the Subramaniam Lab as a Graduate Student in the summer of 2016. A native of Honolulu, Jensen graduated from the University of Washington in 2014 with a Bachelor’s degree in molecular and cell biology. Prior to becoming a TSRI graduate student, he worked in process development for biopharmaceuticals at Boehringer Ingelheim, and also did research on early B cell development and oncogenic signaling in acute lymphoblastic leukemia at UC San Francisco. Jensen was interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration, especially when caused by protein misfolding and aggregation.

Jennifer Hernandez worked as a Research Intern in the Subramaniam Lab. She received her B.S. in Neuroscience and Behavior in May 2016, and is currently pursuing medical degree at Temple University, Pennsylvania

Dr. Megan Varnum joined the Subramaniam Lab as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in March 2016. She studied the complex roles of Rheb and BACE1 in the development of beta-amyloid in Alzheimer’s disease. Megan graduated with her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology/ Neuroscience from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. After that, she obtained her PhD in Pharmacology from Boston University where she began her study of neurodegenerative diseases. While at the Subramaniam Lab she spent one year as a Postdoc focusing on Rheb pathway in BACE1 regulation and AD-related memory function.

Dr Vindhya Nawaratne was a Research Associate in the Subramaniam Lab. She completed her Bachelor of Biomedical Science and PhD in Pharmacology at Monash University, Australia. She then worked as a Research Officer in the MIPS-Servier Drug Discovery Program at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and as a Visiting Academic at Reproductive Biology Assisted Conception Laboratory, University of Melbourne. Vindhya's research has focused on characterizing ligand-receptor interaction and investigating signal transduction and cell biology for the purpose of improving drug discovery for neurological disorders.

Sophia Park joined the Subramaniam Lab as part of the Graduate Program at Scripps in 2015. She worked on elucidating the role of mTOR signaling in both normal brain function as well as in Huntington’s disease. Sophia is from Tucson, Arizona, where she earned her Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from the University of Arizona. During her undergraduate research, she explored mechanisms of photoxidative stress in skin as well as autophagy inhibitors as novel anti-melanoma therapeutics, allowing her to develop a passion for cellular signaling. She was awarded NSF fellowship to work on mechanisms of mTOR regulation while at Subramaniam Lab.

Dr. William (Bill) Pryor was a Research Associate in the Subramaniam Lab. Bill graduated from the University of Georgia in 2012 with his PhD in Physiology. He studied the effects of chronic motor activity on immune cell infiltration and molecular pathways that resist cell death in the central nervous system in animal models of multiple sclerosis. Bill worked on unraveling the molecular events involved with Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s disease, and examined regulators of protein synthesis, which have implications in neurodegenerative diseases. He has published several important papers, and earned an F1000 recognition. Bill is now a Scientist at Stiefel, a GSK Company.

Lindsay Gorgen was an Honors Graduate Student at Florida Atlantic University, majoring in Biology. She did her undergraduate thesis in the Subramaniam Lab, working to understand the molecular mechanism and biological significance of Rheb-PERK signaling, which led to her co-authoring a publication. She is currently at the Washington State Department of Health.

Dr. Supriya Swarnkar was a Research Associate in the Subramaniam Lab from 2012 to 2015. She obtained her PhD from CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute in 2012. She worked on investigating the mechanisms of striatal vulnerability in mouse models of Huntington’s disease focusing on small GTPase Rhes and published the work in the journal, Neurobiology of disease, for which she was F1000 selected. Currently, she is a Senior Project Manager at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Sofia Karabasevic, worked as a Summer Trainee in the Subramaniam Lab, and was later selected for the competitive Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows (SURF) Program of the Scripps Kellogg School of Science and Technology. Sofia is currently majoring in neuroscience at Dartmouth College.

Nikhil Patwardhan worked as a Research Assistant in 2013 the Subramaniam Lab where he studied the role of the mTOR pathway in mediating the striatal damage from Huntington's Disease. He is currently pursuing a PhD in the signaling mechanisms underlying the etiology and pathology of neurodegenerative disorders at University of Central Florida. They have generated a mouse model harboring a human dynein heavy chain mutation associated with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a common peripheral neuropathy. This is the first model of its kind. Nikhil is working on elucidating the molecular basis of the observed phenotype in these animals utilizing a number of biochemical techniques and microscopes.