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 Wongboosin, 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.

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.

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

Eman Seval Headshot

Eman Seyal Research Intern

Eman Seyal Headshot

Eman Seyal

Research Intern

Eman is a Research Intern at the Sampson Lab and an undergraduate student at Harvard University. She is an A.B. Candidate in Human Evolutionary Biology and Mind Brain Behavior on the pre-med track. Eman is passionate about applying her interests in immunology and genetics to pediatric nephrotic syndrome research. On campus, Eman is involved with the Pakistani Students Association as Director of Public Service, Muslim Women’s Medical Alliance, Harvard World Pre-Health Conference, and Foundation for International Medical Relief of Children. In her enthusiasm for supporting pediatric patients, she also serves as a Volunteer at Boston Children’s on the infant and toddler surgical unit.

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.

Adrian Banerji Headshot

Adrian Banerji, MD Pediatric Nephrology and Clinical Fellow

Adrian Banerji Headshot

Adrian Banerji, MD

Pediatric Nephrology and Clinical Fellow



Sowmya Badina Headshot

Sowmya Badina, BS Research Trainee

Sowmya Badina Headshot

Sowmya Badina, BS

Research Trainee

Sowmya is working as Research trainee in Dr. Ana Onuchic-Whitford’s lab. With a Bachelors in Dental Surgery from India, Sowmya is currently pursuing Masters in Health Informatics with a focus in the intersection of Health care and Data Science. During her Masters, Sowmya delved into data analysis, particularly focusing on Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), which sparked a profound interest on kidney genomics.

Sidhant Puntambekar Headshot

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

The Dongwon Lee Lab

The Dongwon Lee Lab and Sampson Lab for Kidney Genomics have been valuable partners since 2019, collaborating closely to advance research on kidney disease through the lens of genomics. The Lee Lab aims to understand how gene regulation contributes to the development and progression of human diseases, specifically focusing on kidney diseases. We use a combination of single-cell multiomics data, genetic data from disease cohorts, functional assays, and machine-learning approaches to address these complex problems. In addition, we work closely with clinicians and experimental biologists to validate and verify our models and predictions. We are dedicated to developing new genomic computational tools and making them accessible to the research community.

Dongwon Lee

Dongwon Lee, PhD Principal Investigator

Dongwon Lee

Dongwon Lee, PhD

Assistant Professor, Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School

Dongwon is a computational biologist and human geneticist with an expertise in machine learning. He is specifically interested in how transcriptional dysregulation affects human diseases, specifically focusing on pediatric kidney diseases. Dongwon seeks to better understand the underlying genetic mechanisms of these diseases and believes we can make a significant breakthrough with our single-cell multi-omic approaches.

Dongwon's Publications

Jeerthi Kannan Headshot

Jeerthi Kannan, MS Research Assistant

Jeerthi Kannan

Jeerthi Kannan, MS

Research Assistant

Jeerthi is a Research Assistant focusing on using computational methods for analyzing and visualizing data. She grew up in Tennessee and completed her Bachelor's in Computational Biology at the University of Rochester and Master's in Computer Science at Vanderbilt University.

Daniel (Duc) Nguyen

Daniel (Duc) Nguyen, BA Research Assistant

Daniel Duc

Daniel (Duc) Nguyen, BA

Research Assistant

Daniel is a Research Assistant in the Dongwon Lee Lab, studying single-cell multiomic data regarding nephrotic diseases. He completed his Bachelor’s in Computational Biology and Mathematical Science at Colby College. As an undergraduate, Daniel worked with Professor Alexandra Howell’s Lab at Dartmouth College studying a novel CRISPR-Cas system for gene therapeutics, and Chesler Lab at Jackson Laboratory working on multi-modal data integrating algorithms to gain insights into substance use disorders.

Anya Greenberg, BS Computational Biologist

Anya Greenberg

Anya Greenberg, BS

Computational Biologist

Anya is a computational biologist studying gene regulation of kidney and immune cells to help decipher the genomic basis of pediatric kidney diseases. As an undergraduate at the University of Rochester, Anya worked in Dr. Amanda Larracuente’s evolutionary genomics lab studying repetitive DNA profiles. She used data visualization and machine learning models to better understand the evolutionary impact of repeat dynamics.

Yangyang Lin Headshot

Yangyang Lin Research Assistant

Yangyang Lin

Yangyang Lin

Research Assistant

Yangyang is a Research Assistant driven by a passion for discovering the complexities of DNA variants using computational tools. Her current work focuses on developing machine learning models to understand how Allele-Specific Accessibility variants affect gene regulation activities. She is continually learning the intricacies of DNA and exploring advanced computational tools to decode these complexities and their implications on human health. Alongside this, Yangyang is actively gaining research experience to prepare for her future goals in the field, aiming to contribute meaningfully to the intersection of computational science and genomics.

Eric Sakkas Headshot

Eric Sakkas, BA Research Assistant

Eric Sakkas

Eric Sakkas, BA

Research Assistant

Eric Sakkas graduated from Wesleyan University with a degree in Molecular Biology & Biochemistry and Computer Science. His thesis involved the development of software to observe allosteric changes in ribosomes. In the lab, Eric works on enhancing allele-specific expression analyses by incorporating filtered whole-genome sequencing data.

Eric's Publications:

The CAR–mRNA Interaction Surface Is a Zipper Extension of the Ribosome A Site

Our Lab Alumni

  • Waverly Alcure, MS | Community Outreach & Social Media Coordinator, current Marketing & Communications Coordinator at the Society for Pediatric Research

  • Alexandra Barry, BS | Research Assistant I, current Graduate Student at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

  • Christopher Benway, PhD | Computational Biologist, current Senior Bioinformatics Engineer at Exosome Diagnostics

  • Catherine Channell | Summer Research Assistant, current Undergraduate Student at Loyola Marymount University

  • Brendan Crawford, MD | Clinical Fellow, current Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Arkansas Children’s Hospital

  • Jenn Fishbein, MD | Pediatric Nephrology Clinical Fellow

  • Christopher Gillies, PhD, MS | Programmer Analyst Sr., current Senior Manager Computational Genomics at Regeneron

  • AC Gomez, MD | Adult & Pediatric Nephrology Clinical Fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Brigham Women’s Hospital

  • Seong Kyu Han, PhD | Postdoctoral Research Fellow, current Assistant Professor at Inha University, Department of Biological Sciences

  • Betul Haykir, PhD | Postdoctoral Research Fellow, current Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital David Breault Lab

  • Gina Kalkar, BA | Research Assistant, current PhD Student at Columbia University

  • Lily McCloskey | Student Research Assistant, current senior at Case Western Reserve University

  • China Nagano, MD, PhD | Visiting Research Fellow

  • Rose Putler, MS | Statistical Geneticist, current Data Scientist at Duo Security

  • Kaylia Reynolds, MS | Computational Biologist

  • Catherine Robertson, PhD, MS | Research Analyst, current Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Michigan

  • Parsa Seyfourian, BS | Computational Summer Research Intern, current Undergraduate Student at The University of British Columbia

  • Kalyn Yasutake, MPH | Research Specialist, current Senior Research Associate at Building Changes

  • Jennifer Lai Yee, MD | Clinical Research Fellow, current Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital

  • Jihoon Yoon, MD, PhD | Research Associate, current Clinical Fellow in the Department of Genomic Medicine at Seoul National University Hospital

Catherine Channell (left) and Alexandra Barry (right)
China Nagano, Seeing Kyu Han, Eric Sakkas, Michelle McNulty
Sampson Lab Team Valentine's Day
Eric Sakkas, Alexandra Barry, Dongwon Lee, Jenn Fishbein
Matt Sampson, Waverly Alcure, Anya Greenberg
Jenn Fishbein, Catherine Channell, Alexendra Barry, Dongwon Lee
Waverly Alcure, Anya Greenberg