Ceren Uncu, is from Antalya, Turkey. She graduated from Istanbul University. After teaching high school biology for a year she decided to move to the US and became a member of Steen Lab in 2011. She is currently the lab supervisor and the animal surgeon of Steen Lab. Aside from managing the lab, Ceren is working on developing new mouse models to get a better understanding on neurodegenerative diseases like Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease and she is preparing samples for Mass Spectrometry. Outside the lab Ceren practices and teaches Yoga and enjoys cooking with friends and family.

Meenakshi Jha is a Lab manager in the Steen lab. She studied Biotechnology(M.Sc.) from Bangalore University, India. After her post-graduation, she worked for the firm Ernst & Young in Bangalore. Her interest in Science made her switch her career to Science and she eventually got an opportunity to join Steen lab in May 2018. Beside managing the lab, she is also managing various projects including NIH funded IMPACC project which involves ~10,000 plasma and serum samples of COVID patients. She loves music, singing is her favorite pastime. She also loves traveling and exploring new places around the world.

Arthur Viode obtained his double MSc in Analytical Chemistry from the Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (Lyon, France) and Chemistry from the École Supérieure de Chimie Physique Électronique de Lyon (Lyon, France). In 2015, he enrolled for his Ph.D. at the Université Paris-Saclay (Paris, France) working with his supervisor François Becher, Ph.D. on the multiplexed mass spectrometry-based quantification of clinical biomarkers proteoforms. In 2019, he joined Dr. H. Steen laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School for a postdoctoral fellowship. His research focuses on the discovery and quantification of biomarkers in body fluids using mass spectrometry-based assay. In his free time Arthur likes backpacking, rock climbing and eating.

Christoph Schlaffner was born and raised in Germany. He graduated from the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (Bioinformatics) and a Master of Science in Engineering (Bioinformatics). He went on to receive his PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK where he worked with Dr. Jyoti Choudhary at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Dr. Andreas Bender at the Center for Molecular Informatics, University of Cambridge, on developing tools and analyzing data for proteogenomics and personal proteomics. Christoph is interested in developing bioinformatics tools to understand the function of non-canonical RNA and translation products and untangling disease related from personal variation. Outside the lab, Christoph enjoys cooking and baking, traveling, and choral music.

Komal K Mandal is from Sikkim, India. She obtained her Masters in Biochemistry from Bangalore University. She discovered the world of proteomics while working as a junior research fellow at the Centre of Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, India. She received her PhD in 2020 in Protein chemistry & Proteomics from the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark under the guidance of Prof. Martin R Larsen. Her thesis was focused on characterization of PTM’s (Phosphorylation, Cysteine modification) of proteins involved in the T cell activation signaling. Komal joined the Steen Lab as a post-doctoral fellow in 2022, pursuing her interests in mass spectrometry now focused on developing high-throughput clinical proteomics pipeline. Outside lab, Komal is interested in traveling, reading fiction and doing ‘something’ for fitness.

Tian Wang is from Changchun, China. He graduated with a B.Sc. on chemical biology in 2017 and a Ph.D. on biology in 2022 (with Prof. Lei Liu) both at Tsinghua University (China). During his Ph.D. program, Tian was focusing on developing new strategies to chemically synthesize biochemical protein tools for studying ubiquitin-associated proteins in cells by proteomic methods, as well as the structural insights into ubiquitination enzymes by biophysical methods. With the increasing interest in mass spectrum, he joined the Steen Lab as a postdoctoral fellow in 2022. In his spare time, Tian loves to work out at gym, watch movies, drink beers, and play Hearthstone!

Anaïs Meziani joined the Steen Lab in 2017 as a student to complete her master program. She graduated with a B.S. in Biochemistry from Lille University (France). She continued with a M.S. program in Genomics and Proteomics in Lille. October 2018 Anaïs has started start her PhD thesis in the lab. Anaïs enjoys team sport as hand-ball and loves to eat mangos from Mexico!

Jie Xue is from Zhengzhou, China. Jie gained her bachelor’s degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences in Wuhan University and continued devoting herself in the pharmaceutical department in Northeastern University for a master’s degree. Her enthusiasm in neurodegenerative disorders and mass spectrometry led her to the Steen Lab as a research assistant in late 2019. Jie is specializing on the initiation and propagation of Alzheimer's Disease, as well as neuroinflammation. She endeavors to gain the expertise in the field, and now she is pursuing her doctorate degree! She enjoys long walks in Boston; tango and swing dance at weekends for mental and physical refreshment; and playing with dogs! Jie is also interested in different cultures and loves all types of dumplings and mochi.

Kathrin studied in Germany and graduated with a M.Sc. in analytical und bioanalytical chemistry from Aalen University, Germany. Due to her interests in mass spectrometry, biochemistry and statistical data analysis of multivariate datasets, she decided to join the Steen lab as a PhD student in 2019. Her project involves the comparison of different mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease to human samples to identify the best matching model for further investigation. In her free time Kathrin likes hiking, rock climbing, knitting and cooking.

Maaike Beuvink is from The Netherlands. She completed her bachelor’s degree in Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences at Leiden University, followed by a research master’s degree in Drug Development and Neurohealth at Maastricht University. During her master’s degree, she did her internship at the Steen lab and in 2022 she joined the Steen Lab as a PhD student. Maaike is focusing on using mass spectrometry to characterize proteins in tauopathies, with a special focus on tau. During her free time, she likes to travel all around the world, trying all kind of sports and meeting up with friends.

Patrick W. van Zalm was born and raised in the Netherlands. He started his academic training at the University of Amsterdam where he did a bachelor’s program in Neuroscience followed by a master’s program in drug development and neuroscience at Maastricht University. The research focus of Patrick lays at the discovery and validation of biomarkers in body fluids for Alzheimer’s Disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. Besides, Patrick builds a lot of data analysis scripts and pipelines in R, Python and Bash to assist colleagues as well as for the analysis of large-scale proteomics project on the Hospital’s High Performance Computing services. Outside of the lab Patrick tries to stay in somewhat healthy by going to the gym as well as running. Other interests include music, cooking and just meeting up with friends.

Saima Ahmed completed her Master Thesis "Biomarker Discovery for Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia using Mass Spectrometry Based Urine Proteomics" under supervision of Dr. Hanno Steen. She earned her Master’s in Biotechnology from Harvard Extension School while working in the Steen Lab as Lab Manager. Her affinity for the Steen Lab was so strong she decided to pursue her PhD in the lab. Her project involves improving proteomic workflows for biomarker discovery focusing on body fluids such as human urine, CSF, and plasma. Saima’s love for the color pink shades all aspects of her life, including her lab bench.

Sinead Greally graduated with a BSc in Biomedical Science from the National University of Ireland, Galway and due to her interest in pharmacology and neuroscience, she continued her studies with a Research Masters in Drug Development and NeuroHealth from Maastricht University, in the Netherlands. During her second year of this Master’s, Ms. Greally carried out a 9-month internship at the Steen Laboratory, working with Ying Xiong, PhD, using mass spectrometry and proteomics to characterize and quantify alpha-synuclein in the neurodegenerative disease Multiple System Atrophy (MSA). After Ms. Greally obtained her MSc from Maastricht University, she returned to the Steen Laboratory to begin a PhD, continuing her work on the proteomic characterization of alpha-synuclein, now in both MSA and Parkinson’s disease.While completing her PhD, Sinead enjoys soaking up the American culture here in Boston, and likes traveling, movies and going out with friends.

Tom Altenburg studied Biophysics (M.Sc.) at the Humboldt Universtät zu Berlin, Germany. During his bachelor’s he was working on mathematical models in systems biology in the lab of Edda Klipp. For his master’s thesis, he went to Copenhagen, joining the Linding lab, where he was working on kinase target space prediction by improving machine learning models by considering recent phosphoproteomics data. Being interested in proteomics, he is now pursuing his PhD in the lab of Bernhard Renard. As part of his doctoral studies, he is working on the interface between mass spectrometry-based proteomics and deep learning. While doing so, he is especially focusing on the interpretability of model predictions and how these may correspond to the underlying physico-chemical principles. Currently, he is visiting the Steen lab to use his recent developments in applications that require large search spaces, such as (immuno-)peptidomics. In his spare time, he is either cycling or in the gym

Dr. Hanno Steen, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School, whose laboratory is located at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Steen’s group research has three focal areas: i) The discovery of urinary biomarkers for diagnostic purposes in a wide range of acute and chronic diseases including appendicitis, Kawasaki disease, TB, traumatic brain injury, and Crohn’s Diseases. To this end the Steen Lab has developed a urine proteomics platform which allows for the fast and efficient processing and proteomic analysis of urine specimens. ii) Use of proteomics to study post-translational mechanisms of protein regulation, with particular emphasis on protein degradation in mitosis and development. The Steen group developed the concept of co-regulation proteomics algorithms that correlates protein abundance traces specific enzyme activities and functions. This work resulted in the identification of kinens, as a new class of cell cycle dependent substrates of the Anaphase Promoting Complex. iii) Method development to improve a) processing of proteomic samples, b) accuracy and precision of protein quantification and iii) computational methods for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of proteomic data. For instance, the FLEXIQuant approach developed by the Steen Lab, which allows for the exquisitely detailed characterization of selected proteins and their post-translational modification, has been instrumental for studying multikinase mechanisms (Nat Methods. 2012;9:504), and the post-translational regulation of Tiki1 in Xenopus development (Cell. 2012;149:1565) and kinesin C1 during mitosis (EMBO J. 2014;33:385).

Dr. Judith Steen is an Associate Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, a member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and the Director of the Neuroproteomics Laboratory in the F. M. Kirby Neuroscience Center at Boston Children’s Hospital. Her laboratory works to understand neuro-regeneration and neurodegenerative diseases using systems biology approaches. The laboratory develops novel qualitative and quantitative methodologies at the interface of proteomics and transcriptomics with special emphasis on computational proteomics approaches. These novel quantitative methods and bioinformatics tools developed by the Steen Laboratory are being applied to understand the biology of regeneration and neurodegeneration in both mouse models, stem cells and human tissues, to find molecular targets for therapeutics, and to identify biomarkers of the neurodegenerative process. Further functional studies using biochemical, molecular and cell biology approaches are used to verify and understand the role of the targets and biomarkers in the context of injury and disease. The goal of this research is to use molecular information provided by our quantitative proteomics measurements in order to ameliorate neurodegeneration and promote regeneration.

Kyle Higgins obtained his B.Sc. in Physics from Lehigh University in the United States. During this time, he researched high energy hadron collision experiments in collaboration with the Brookhaven National Lab. Kyle began as a research assistant in the field of bioinformatics at the Steen Laboratory in 2019 and he is applying statistical and algorithmic techniques to integrate data regarding single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with genomic and transcriptomic reference sequences to better understand their resulting proteomes. He additionally works to understand the T Cell Education process in the developing Thymus using single-cell RNA-seq data.

Gonzalo was born and raised in Madrid (Spain), where he attended Pharmacy School. After working as a clinical pharmacist during the COVID-19 pandemic, and led by his passion for drug discovery, he moved to the Netherlands to pursue a research master’s degree in Drug Development and Neurohealth at Maastricht University. Gonzalo recently joined the lab in order to complete his master thesis, where he will be using mass spectrometry and immunopeptidomics to characterize proteins in neurodegenerative disorders. As a sports enthusiast, he is a marathon finisher and runs or cycles on a daily basis and, most importantly, he is a Real Madrid supporter.