Our Members

Current Members

Karl Willert

Principal Investigator
kwillert@ucsd.edu

Karl received his PhD from the University of California in San Francisco, did his post-doctoral research at Stanford, and joined UCSD as Assistant Professor in 2008. He is currently an Associate Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine.

Stephanie Grainger

Assistant Project Scientist
stephanie.grainger@gmail.com

Stephanie joined the lab in 2013, after completing her PhD at the University of Ottawa in Canada. Her thesis work focused on the role of the Cdx transcription factor family in mouse intestinal development, under supervision of Dr. David Lohnes. Stephanie is interested in the developmental processes that govern hematopoietic development in the zebrafish embryo. Stephanie is a recipient of the NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, postdoctoral fellowships from the American Heart Association and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and is currently a Scholar of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Pooja Sonavane

Post-Doctoral Fellow
psonavane@ucsd.edu

Pooja joined the lab in August 2018, after completing her PhD at the University of Virginia.

Myan Do

PhD Candidate
mydo@ucsd.edu

Diana Gumber

Lab Manager
digumber@ucsd.edu

Diana graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 2015 with a Bachelor’s degree in Animal Science and Biology. She completed a MS in Regenerative Medicine from Cal Poly SLO as a CIRM intern in the lab in June 2017. After graduating with her MS degree, Diana joined the lab as a Research Technician. She is currently studying the potential of targeting the Frizzled 7 receptor in the WNT signaling pathway as an anti-cancer treatment.

Julia Thulin

Master’s Student
juliathulin@gmail.com

Julia is a Master’s student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and joined the lab as a CIRM intern in September 2018.

Jordan Setayesh

Lab Volunteer
jsetayes@ucsd.edu

Jordan graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a degree in Physiology and Neuroscience. He joined the lab in January 2016 and plans to continue learning lab techniques and building his knowledge base in order to contribute to the lab.

Hannah Morris Little

Lab Technician
hmorrisl@ucsd.edu

Hannah graduated from UC San Diego in 2018 with a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Cell Biology. She joined the Willert lab in the Fall of 2017 and is investigating the role of noncanonical Wnt signaling in hematopoiesis.

Neya Suresh-Kumar

Undergraduate Student
nsureshk@ucsd.edu