Mission
The Cornell Reproductive Sciences Center (CoRe) Trainee Special Interest Group (T-SIG) is a multi-disciplinary group of trainees spanning biomedical, clinical, veterinary/animal, and social sciences across the Ithaca and Weill Cornell campuses. Members are trainees at any stage of their career development, including but not limited to graduate students, postdocs, medical residents, and clinical fellows. The overarching goals of the CoRe T-SIG are to provide trainees with opportunities for sharing their research, networking, and career development. As part of our commitment to continuing Cornell’s prestigious history of reproductive research, our mission is to foster the development of trainees in an inclusive, strong, and collaborative community of scientists, clinicians, and health experts. CoRe places a strong emphasis on training, career development, and diversity – to that end we are welcoming of all trainee researchers regardless of socioeconomic status, ability, race/ethnicity, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, or religion.
As part of our commitment to training and career development, the CoRe T-SIG will organize trainee-focused opportunities such as provides a trainee chalk talk series, workshops on mentorship, leadership, research program development, and paper and grant writing. The CoRe T-SIG will also provide programming in the form of trainee-led activities, high visibility invited seminars, and our ongoing and hugely successful annual symposium. When available, we will facilitate small grant opportunities to provide funds for small seed projects and other collaborative interactions among our trainees.
CoRe Trainees Statement on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization
Recently in their ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the conservative super-majority of the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Three generations have grown up in a country with a constitutional right to abortion. Now, after 50 years – more than a fifth of our nation’s history – the protections offered in Roe have been negated. Abortion rights will be decided on a state-by-state basis, with roughly half the country poised or predicted to outright ban abortion (indeed, some states have already reinstituted a ban). The Cornell Reproductive Science Center (CoRe) Trainee Special Interest Group (T-SIG) was horrified by the news. We stand with everyone who already has or is about to lose essential components of their reproductive health care. Although Court’s ruling centers its language on women, we want to make it very clear that losing Roe impacts more than only cis women – many trans men, nonbinary and intersex people also require access to a full range of reproductive health services, including abortion. For many of these people – especially people of color and those in the LGBTQ2I+ community – access to reproductive health care prior to Dobbs was already fraught. Moving forward, the rights and lives of millions of Americans will be precarious, and their futures subject to the whims of state legislatures.
The Dobbs ruling impacts our community more profoundly than a simple, succinct tweet can capture. In the coming weeks, we will be sharing resources, analysis, and personal experiences from CoRe members in order to highlight the myriad of ways the loss of abortion rights affects us, as individuals and a community.
Trainee Executive Committee
Welcome! We are an interdisciplinary group of trainees interested broadly in the field of reproduction. We welcome trainee membership with broad interests in reproduction such as (but not limited to) mechanisms of reproductive physiology, conservation biology, health economics, gender, equity, and inclusion in reproductive health, and evolutionary biology.
Graduate Student working with Mariana Wolfner and John Schimenti to understand egg activation in flies and mice.
Jonathon is a PhD student co-advised by Mariana Wolfner and John Schimenti in the department of Molecular Biology and Genetics. He studies the oocyte-to-embryo transition known as egg activation in both fruit flies and mice. Jonathon is a PhD student working to understand how intracellular calcium signaling and global protein phosphorylation state changes regulate the onset of embryogenesis, and how different organisms make use of these conserved features of egg activation. He has a BS in Cell and Developmental Biology from the University of Rochester; there, during his post-grad work in Michael Welte’s lab, he studied the mechanisms by which fat storage organelles called lipid droplets and the actin cytoskeleton regulate oocyte maturation in flies. He is excited to continue learning about fly oocyte development and to branch into a mammalian model system during grad school to understand the similar and different ways that insects and mammals begin embryogenesis, and how disrupted egg activation affects fertility and embryonic development.
Graduate student in Dr. Paula Cohen’s lab studying the protein network underlying crossover designation in mammalian meiosis.
Rachel Bradley is originally from just outside of Toronto, Canada. She attended the University of Toronto where she earned her HBSc in Molecular Genetics. During her undergraduate studies she worked in the labs of Dr. Andrew Wilde, where she investigated mammalian profilin isoform dynamics and how they contribute to the heterogenous structures of the actin cytoskeleton, and Dr. Miguel Ramalho-Santos, where she studied the effects of environmental stress on the expression of transposable elements in mammalian embryonic stem cells.
At present, Rachel is a Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Paula Cohen’s lab. Here, her research project focuses on interrogating the interplay and temporal dynamics between different protein components in crossover formation and patterning in mammalian meiosis.
Graduate student in Dr. Mariana Wolfner’s lab studying female-derived metabolic enzymes that associate with sperm in the female reproductive tract of fruit flies.
Melissa is from Cranford, New Jersey, and obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Pittsburgh in 2023. During her time at Pitt, she worked in the lab of Dr. Deepika Vasudevan, where she studied sex differences in cellular stress between males and females using the Drosophila larval fat body as a model. After graduating, she began her PhD in the lab of Dr. Mariana Wolfner, where she is currently using Drosophila to understand how proteins produced by females interact with sperm and contribute to reproductive success. She hopes that this work will deepen our understanding of elusive sperm-female interactions that precede fertilization.
Graduate student co-advised by Drs. Paula Cohen and Charles Danko, studying the transcriptional regulation and chromatin dynamics of spermatogenesis.
Saloni grew up in India, and completed her undergraduate education at the University of California, Davis. Here she studied the role R-loops in causing DNA damage. She worked on understanding the role of XRN2, a 3′ to 5′ exonuclease and how its depletion causes increased R-loop mediated genome instability. Now at Cornell, Saloni is investigating bromodomain-containing proteins and their essential role in male fertility, particularly focusing on chromatin condensation and gene expression.
Graduate student in Dr. Ben Cosgrove’s lab, studying the the role of cellular senescence in mammalian ovarian aging.
David is originally from Colombia, where he completed his medical degree at Unidad Central del Valle. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he worked as a general practitioner. Motivated by a passion for research, he moved to Boston to pursue a postdoctoral position in systems biology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Under the mentorship of Dr. Miles Miller, he worked on developing photocleavable prodrugs for targeted cancer treatment. Currently, David’s research at the Cosgrove lab focuses on elucidating the role of cellular senescence in mammalian ovarian aging, with the aim of uncovering novel insights into reproductive health and senotherapeutics. His work integrates high-throughput multi-omic profiling, ex vivo models and computational analyses to explore these mechanisms.
Graduate student in Dr. de Mestre’s Lab studying equine early pregnancy loss for applications to wildlife conservation and human health.
Isha Chauhan is from Oldham County, Kentucky, and completed her B.S. in Biology at the University of Kentucky. Throughout undergrad, she spent time working with the rare cholesterol disease, sitosterolemia. She investigated mutations that caused the disease and evaluated treatment options — building knowledge about physiology, cardiovascular disease, and animal models within research. This allowed her to explore veterinary medicine within human medicine and has prompted her to pursue a DVM/PhD with hopes of bridging her passions in veterinary medicine and clinical research. As a DVM/PhD student, Isha hopes to complete wildlife conservation and zoology research to improve endangered species initiatives. As the threats of climate change and impacts of human activity grow, she is interested in investigating their role in ecological populations and within reproduction to sustain wildlife populations!
Postdoctoral Associate in Jeannine Gerhardt’s lab at Weill Cornell Medicine studying how BRCA2 carrier mutations lead to diminished ovarian reserve and cancer predisposition.
Rebecca is originally from Eastchester, NY and obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from Lafayette College in Easton, PA. While at Lafayette, she worked in Dr. Justin Hines’ lab studying chaperone protein requirements for prion propagation. After graduating, she moved to the Boston area to obtain a PhD in Genetics from Tufts University. Her dissertation work in Dr. Catherine Freudenreich’s lab focused on understanding mechanisms of genomic instability in repeat expansions disorders caused by CAG/CTG repeat expansions.
Rebecca relocated to NYC to work in Dr. Jeannine Gerhardt’s lab as a postdoctoral associate. Her research is focused on examining how BRCA2 carrier mutations contribute to infertility (diminished ovarian reserve: a reduction in quantity or quality of oocyte pool) and cancer predisposition. She is using cell culture models as well as patient samples provided by NewYork-Presbyterian. She is new to the field of reproductive medicine but is excited to learn more and potentially uncover new mechanisms leading to diminished ovarian reserve in women!
Postdoc in Dr. Vimal Selvaraj’s lab and learning/working on integrative physiology.
Efficiency is the key to the production and reproduction of livestock. The efficient way is the humane way, and it is also the green way. I obtained my PhD in Animal Molecular and Cellular Biology from the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Florida, and I have been dedicated to accelerating genetic gain and environmental resilience in livestock species through a combination of bioinformatic tools and advanced assisted reproductive biotechnologies.
Postdoctoral Associate in Mariana Wolfner’s lab studying egg activation and early embryogenesis in fruit flies
Emily grew up in central Massachusetts and earned her bachelor’s degree in Biology from the College of the Holy Cross in 2019. As an undergraduate researcher in Dr. Geoff Findlay’s lab, Emily studied the function and evolution of newly evolved genes required for Drosophila spermatogenesis. She then pursued her PhD in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, advised by Dr. Cassandra Extavour. Emily’s dissertation investigated evolution in the mechanisms of germ line specification, with a particular focus on the insect-specific, rapidly evolving gene oskar. Emily examined how Oskar protein’s critical role in organizing maternally provisioned germ line determinants for inheritance into future germ cells could evolve over short evolutionary timescales. Emily completed her PhD in 2025 and is now a a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell, where she continues to study the key events that link oogenesis to early embryogenesis through her investigation of egg activation. More specifically, she is investigating how phosphoregulation of RNA-binding proteins during the oocyte-to-embryo transition contributes to the massive shifts in post-transcriptional regulation necessary for early development.
Graduate student in Dr. Ren’s lab, studying the interaction between the immune and female reproductive system.
Yu-Hsiang is originally from Taiwan and received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Animal Science at National Taiwan University. He joined Dr. Ren’s lab in 2023, where he studies reproductive biology with a focus on the immune system’s role in ovarian function. His research focuses on inflammatory programmed cell death during the ovarian cycle and how macrophages contribute to ovarian vascular remodeling.
Graduate student in Athena Ren’s lab working on the effects of early life overnutrition on ovarian function.
Jackson is originally from Lusaka, Zambia. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Mulungushi University and completed a master’s degree in Animal Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. He joined Dr. Ren’s lab in 2024, where he studies reproductive biology with an emphasis on how early-life overnutrition shapes developmental programming and impacts ovarian function. His research focuses on elucidating how early nutritional environments remodel the ovarian stroma and influence overall ovarian development and physiology.
Graduate student in Athena Ren’s lab investigating the genetic regulation during ovulation and luteinization, and how alterations in that impact ovarian function.
Kashish grew up in India and then completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Manchester and a master’s degree University of Oxford. During this time, she gained experience looking at cardiac development during embryogenesis and also understanding causes EBV positive gastric cancer using computational genomics. After that, she worked as a research assistant before moving to Ithaca for her PhD. As a graduate student in the Ren lab now, she is investigating the genetic regulation during ovulation and luteinization and how can alterations in that impact ovarian function.
