Team Bios

In 2019, Dr. Mazzone joined the Functional Epigenomics Laboratory where she works in a senior capacity and as a lab manager. After receiving her doctorate in 2001 from the University of Bari, Italy, she came to Mayo Clinic in 2003 as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Nicholas F. LaRusso, M.D., until 2005. Then she joined the laboratory of Gianrico Farrugia, M.D., and remained until 2019. Starting as a senior postdoctoral fellow, she was promoted to the rank of research associate. Currently, Dr. Mazzone holds the academic rank of instructor in medicine. Her technical expertise in cellular and molecular biology techniques includes RNA sequencing, ATAC sequencing, multiple single-cell techniques and cell culture.

Dr. Mohammed Ismail is a bioinformatics research fellow in the Functional Epigenomics Lab at Mayo Clinic. His primary research interest is solving computational challenges in genomic and epigenomic assay data interpretation, specifically in the developing field of single-cell genomics. He graduated with dual degrees in computer science and biological sciences from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India, and earned a master's degree in bioinformatics and a Ph.D. in computer science from Indiana University, Bloomington, in 2020. At Indiana University, Dr. Mohammed Ismail developed several algorithms using combinatorial approaches and probabilistic modeling to solve problems in genomics, such as clonal reconstruction from allele frequency time series estimated by whole genome sequencing of an evolving cell population. Before embarking in the academic world, he worked in industry as a software engineer and developer.

In 2009, Amik Munankarmy earned a medical degree from Tianjin Medical University and completed his master's degree in general surgery at Tongji University, China, in 2018. His research in Dr. Maia's lab focuses on identifying transcriptional dependencies in ovarian cancer using 3D ovarian cancer organoids and patient-derived xenografts.

In 2022, Letícia Sandoval joined Mayo Clinic's Functional Epigenomics Laboratory. She earned her medical degree from the University of Brasilia in 2021. During her undergraduate years, she developed several research projects in oncology and immunology. Her current research focus in the lab is understanding tumor heterogeneity in ovarian cancer using single cell epigenomic profiling and 3D organoid cultures.

In 2014, Qiong Wang enrolled in the Experimental and Medical Biosciences Program in Linköping University, Sweden, as a master's student. She began her doctoral studies at the University of Iceland in 2017 and received her Ph.D. in 2022. In Dr. Maia's lab, her research is focused on understanding the relationship between DNA methylation and enhancer function.