Meet Our Team

Matt Sampson Headshot

Matt Sampson, MD, MS Principal Investigator

Matt Sampson

Matt Sampson, MD, MS

Principal Investigator, Warren E. Grupe Chair of Pediatric Nephrology at Boston Children’s Hospital, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Associate Member of the Broad Institute and member of the Kidney Disease Initiative, and Research Faculty at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Nephrology Division.

Matt is a Pediatric Nephrologist and genetic epidemiologist in the Division of Nephrology at Boston Children’s Hospital. He completed his residency and fellowship training at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and received his MS in Clinical Epidemiology with a focus on Human Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to taking a “kidneyomics” research approach to pediatric kidney disease, he cares for many children with diverse kidney diseases. He is also a strong proponent for open data sharing in nephrology and increasing the genomic literacy of all nephrologists.

Matt's Publications

Michelle McNulty, MS Computational Biologist

Michelle McNulty

Michelle McNulty, MS

Computational Biologist

Michelle is a statistical geneticist leading our APOL1 analyses and focuses on GWAS of trans-ethnic nephrotic syndrome cohorts, and using transcriptomics to map variant function. Michelle started with the Sampson Lab at the University of Michigan where she was completing her Masters of Science in Biostatistics and the Genome Science Training Program and has been heavily involved in the lab’s creation and efforts.

Michelle's Publications:

An eQTL Landscape of Kidney Tissue in Human Nephrotic Syndrome

APOL1 Genotype-Associated Morphologic Changes Among Patients with Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis

A Glomerular Transcriptomic Landscape of Apolipoprotein L1 in Black Patients with Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis

Common Risk Variants in NPHS1 and TNFSF15 are Associated with Child Steriod-Sensitive Nephrotic Syndrome

Ana Onuchic-Whitford, MD Instructor, Harvard School of Medicine Nephrologist, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Ana Onuchich-Whitford

Ana Onuchic-Whitford, MD

Instructor, Harvard School of Medicine and Nephrologist, Brigham and Women's Hospital

Ana is a physician-scientist who received her MD from the University of São Paulo in Brazil, where she also completed her residency in Internal Medicine. After relocating to the US, she repeated her Internal Medicine residency at the University of Connecticut and did her clinical fellowship in Nephrology in the joint Brigham and Women's Hospital / Massachusetts General Hospital program. As a post-doctoral research fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital, she studied the genetics and genomics of nephrotic syndrome and other genetic kidney diseases. In 2022, Ana started as an attending physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and as an instructor at Harvard Medical School, and is the Director of the Renal Genetics Clinic there. She is continuing her research in computational genomics in the Sampson Lab at Boston Children's Hospital.

Janewit Wongboonsin, MD, MS Adult Nephrology Fellow

Janewit Wongboonsin

Janewit Wongboonsin, MD, MS

Adult Nephrology Fellow

Janewit is a nephrology fellow at Brigham Women’s and Mass General Hospitals. He completed Medical school in Siriraj Hospital in Thailand and went through IM training and Masters of Science at the University of Minnesota. Janewit is currently working on utilizing the Mass General Brigham Biobank for genomics discovery in nephrotic syndrome.

Adrian Banerji, MD
Pediatric Nephrology and Clinical Fellow

Adrian Headshot

Adrian Banerji, MD

Pediatric Nephrology and Clinical Fellow



Kathy Madrazo Headshot

Kathy Madrazo, MD, MSc
Clinical Research Specialist

Kathy Madrazo

Kathy Madrazo, MD, MSc

Clinical Research Specialist

Kathy is a Pediatrician from Mexico where she graduated as an MD. Even though nephrotic syndrome is considered a rare disease, it is also a wide set of diseases that have a great impact on many individuals and their families. Kathy is dedicated to supporting the nephrotic syndrome community and advancing our understanding of this rare disease.

Junmo Sung, MS
Data Analyst

Junmo Sung Headshot

Junmo Sung, MS

Data Analyst

Junmo is a Data Analyst studying genomics and transcriptomics of kidney disease in the Ana Onuchic-Whitford Lab. He received his Master's degree in Biomolecular Engineering and Bioinformatics at University of California Santa Cruz and Bachelor's in Genetic Engineering at Kyunghee University.

Sidhant Puntambekar, BS Bioinformatician

Sidhant Puntambekar

Sidhant Puntambekar, BS

Bioinformatician

Sidhant is a bioinformatician at the Sampson Lab working on discovering the consequences of pediatric steroid-sensitive nephrotic syndrome risk alleles on the immune cell transcriptome. He completed his bachelor's degree at the University of Colorado Boulder in Computer Science with a minor in Computational Biology and previously worked at Bionano Genomics where he developed software tools for structural variant detection, de novo genome assembly, and variant annotation using optical genome mapping data. His long term goal is to develop interpretable machine learning models and robust genomics software to improve support for patients by clinicians and biomedical data scientists.

Sidhant's Publications:

Cell-level metadata are indispensable for documenting single-cell sequencing datasets

David Vanderwall
MD-PhD Student at Harvard Medical School

David Vanderwall

David Vanderwall

MD-PhD Student at Harvard Medical School

Proteomics and Computational Biology research implementing mass spectrometry. Focused on elucidating the clinical presentation and biological mechanisms underlying APOL1-mediated Nephrotic Syndrome using network analysis and other graph theoretical approaches.

David’s Publications:

Cell-level metadata are indispensable for documenting single-cell sequencing datasets



Kristen Gibson, PhD
Postdoctorate Fellow

Kristen Gibson

Kristen Gibson

Postdoctorate Fellow

Kristen is a postdoctoral fellow with a PhD in Medical Genetics from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She has a mixed wet-lab and dry-lab background, with her doctoral studies focusing on identifying genetic and circulating biomarkers associated with pediatric autoinflammatory disorders. As a post-doc, she aims to expand her computational skills through interrogating genomic and transcriptomic datasets to better our understanding of the genetic causes, diagnosis, and treatment of nephrotic syndromes. Outside of the lab, Kristen loves spending time outdoors. She is an avid hiker, mountain biker, and skier (among way too many other hobbies…) and is excited to explore what the New England States have to offer!





Noelani Schulmeyer, MS
Social Media and Community Outreach Manager

Noelani Schulmeyer

Noelani Schulmeyer

Social Media and Community Outreach Manager

Noelani joins us after coaching college field hockey for the past five years, most recently at Amherst College, where she managed all social media and communications initiatives. She also worked as the Social Media Manager for a lacrosse company. These experiences fueled her passion for creating content and storytelling, particularly in an academic environment. Noelani has a M.S. in Management from Catholic University and a B.A. in English from Washington and Lee University. She enjoys going to the movies and hanging out with her greyhound, Phineas.



Lily Sampson Social Media Intern

Lily Sampson

Lily Sampson

Social Media Intern

Lily is a junior at Brookline High School in Brookline, MA. She has been the social media intern in our lab since October 2023. In this role, she has created content on various different social media platforms and has contributed to our community outreach efforts. Outside of the lab, Lily is a varsity softball player and captain.