Gokcumen Lab Team

We are curiosity-driven scholars from various disciplines.

Omer Gokcumen

Professor, PI

Omer received his Ph.D. at University of Pennsylvania under Dr. Theodore Schurr and studied with Dr. Charles Lee at Harvard Medical School before establishing the laboratory. He is interested in all things evolution and anthropology.

Charikleia Karageorgiou

Postdoctoral Fellow

Charikleia received her PhD from Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, studying polymorphic inversions in Drosophila subobscura. She is particularly interested in genome structure evolution and the mechanisms underlying structural variant formation. She aspires to identify and characterize structurally complex regions genome-wide across different primates.

Kendra Scheer

Ph.D. Candidate, Biological Sciences

Kendra graduated from the University of California, San Diego with dual degrees in Anthropology with a concentration in Archaeology and Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution along with a minor in Chinese Studies. She is primarily interested in diet related gene by environment interactions across human populations. Her current work involves describing the copy number variation of digestive enzymes across human populations.

Luane Landau

Ph.D. Candidate, Biological Sciences

Luane earned a B.Sc. in Biology (2020) and an M.Sc. in Genetics & Molecular Biology (2022) from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Now a fourth-year Ph.D. student, she studies the evolution of gene expression using comparative genomics and transcriptomics, focusing on mammalian salivary glands and their links to diet, immunity, and metabolic health.

Carsyn Bonesteel

Undergraduate Researcher

Carsyn is a 4th year Bioinformatics/Computational Biology student minoring in statistics. She is currently working on a project studying the evolution and function of a copy-number variable gene involved in metabolism. Her overall research interests center on how complex genetic diversity evolves and produces phenotypic diversity.

Diana Rodriguez

Ph.D. Student, Genetics, Genomics & Bioinformatics

Diana joined the lab in 2026 as a Ph.D. student in the Genetics, Genomics and Bioinformatics program. A fuller profile is coming soon.

Cameron W. A. Snyder

Ph.D. Student, Biological Sciences

Cameron earned a B.S. in Biology, Molecular Genetics (2024) from the University of Rochester. Along with his coursework, he conducted and assisted research for four years at the Targeted Therapeutics Laboratory for Gynecological Cancers within the Wilmot Cancer Institute. He joined the BEAGL in 2026 as a Ph.D. student in Biological Sciences, and is interested in how genomic structural variants arise within populations that influence metabolism, viral persistence, and oncogenesis.

Samuel Tabrisky

Ph.D. Student, Biological Sciences

Samuel joined the lab in 2026 as a Ph.D. student in Biological Sciences. A fuller profile is coming soon.

Selected trainee awards

  • Carsyn BonesteelGoldwater Scholar and HHMI Cech Fellow, 2026
  • Charikleia KarageorgiouASHG Reviewers’ Choice and Utah Rising Stars in Genetics and Genomics, 2026; GSA DeLill Nasser Award, 2025
  • Luane LandauBest podium talk, GGB Research Day, 2026
  • Cameron W. A. SnyderUB iSeed Scholar, 2026
  • Diana RodriguezT32 IMSD fellow, 2026
  • Petar PajicNSF Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2025; UB’s sole nominee for the CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award, 2025
  • Alber AqilUB CAS Dissertation Fellowship, 2023
  • Megan DwyerSUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence, 2020
  • Marie SaitouGenetics Society of America DeLill Nasser Award, 2019
  • André Campelo dos SantosPollitzer Award, American Association of Physical Anthropologists, 2019

Alumni

Postdoctoral Fellows

Marie Saitou

2017 – 2020

Marie was an Astellas Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab, working on the evolution of gene expression and copy number variation. She is now faculty at the Center for Integrative Genetics at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, where she runs her own group. Winner of the Genetics Society of America DeLill Nasser Award (2019).

Eaaswarkhanth Muthukrishnan

2014 – 2016

Eaaswar worked on genome-wide scans for selection in human populations and ran the laboratory’s sequencing facility. He is now a Research Associate at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California.

Ph.D. Students

Petar Pajic

2020 – 2025

Petar worked on the evolution of mucins and variable number tandem repeats, and on how repeat variation generates new gene function. He is now an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in the Stacy Malaker Lab at Yale University, and was UB’s sole nominee for the 2025 CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award.

Alber Aqil

2019 – 2025

Alber worked on balancing selection, segmental duplications and the artefacts they create in short-read data. He is now a postdoctoral researcher in the Joshua Akey Lab at Princeton University. UB Presidential Fellow and CAS Dissertation Fellow; third place in UB’s Three-Minute Thesis competition (2023).

Ozgur Taskent

2016 – 2019

Ozgur worked on Neanderthal ancestry in Western Asia and on archaic introgression, including from the Altai Neanderthal lineage. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Middle East Technical University in Türkiye.

Andre Campelo Dos Santos

2018 – 2019

André visited the lab from the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil, and worked on ancient genomes and population structure in the Americas. He is now faculty at the University of Oklahoma. Recipient of the Pollitzer Award from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (2019).

Yen Lung ‘Onta’ Lin

2014 – 2019

Onta characterised genomic structural variation hotspots and deletion variants shared with archaic hominins. He is now a postdoctoral fellow in the Barreiro Lab at the University of Chicago. Recipient of the SMBE Carer Award (2018).

Duo ‘Erica’ Xu

2014 – 2018

Erica worked on structural variation in regulatory regions of the human genome and on loss-of-function tolerance in enhancers. She is now a Senior Computational Biologist at Pathos.

Skyler Resendez

2016 – 2020

Skyler worked on computational approaches to genomic variation. She is now a senior postdoctoral fellow in the Peter Elkin lab at the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

M.Sc. Students

Maddie Bartz

2021 – 2023

Maddie worked on Neanderthal and Denisovan structural variations. She is currently a Ph.D. student in the lab of Matthew Hahn at Indiana University.

Achisha Saikia

2021 – 2023

Achisha worked on salivary gland transcriptome evolution in mice. She is now a bioinformatics researcher in UT Southwestern Medical Center in Houston.

John Sebastiani

2017 – 2018

John Sebastiani (M.S., 2018) – Now a Ph.D. student at the University of Miami

Undergraduate Researchers

Valentina Allen

Valentina works on mucin genetic variation and is the main reason why our laboratory is clean and functional.

Lindsey Siao

2026

Lindsey Siao (B.S., 2026)

Benjamin Stein

2022

Benjamin Stein (B.S. 2022) – Now @GWU anthropology

Megan Dwyer

2020

Megan Dwyer (B.S., 2020) – Now @ Master of Science in Genetic Counseling program at the MGH Institute of Health Professions.

Umair Syed

2021

Umair Syed (B.S., 2021) – now an undergraduate researcher in the Feltri Lab at UB Med.

Therese Wild

2021

Therese Wild (B.S., 2021) – Now an undergraduate researcher in the Lin chemistry lab at UB

Kirsten Dean

2019

Kirsten Dean (B.S., 2019) – Now a Research Scientist I at AMRI in Buffalo

Sarah Kassem

Sarah has worked in the lab as an undergraduate researcher since 2023, and is a co-author on our work on the structural evolution of proline-rich protein genes in primate saliva.

Master’s and undergraduate alumni

More than thirty master’s students and undergraduates have worked in the lab since 2013. A few of where they went:

  • Alexa Bracci B.S. — Ph.D. at Cornell; now a bioinformatics research scientist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
  • Hannah Calkins B.S. — Ph.D. at Roswell Park; now a medical science liaison at Natera.
  • Achisha Saikia M.S. — Bioinformatician at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
  • Sarah Kassem B.S. — co-author on our work on the structural evolution of proline-rich protein genes in primate saliva.
  • Therese Wild B.S. — Ph.D. student at the University of Utah.
  • Megan Dwyer B.S. — SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence; now a genetic counselor at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Others have gone on to medical school at UB and Stony Brook, doctoral training in physical therapy, science teaching, conservation science and research roles in industry — among them John Sebastiani (M.S.), now a lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.

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