Meet the team!

Babak Momeni, PI

Babak joined the department of biology at Boston College in 2015 as an Assistant Professor. He received his doctoral training in Photonics Research Group (Electrical Engineering) at Georgia Tech, where he designed and implemented compact on-chip photonic demultiplexers. He continued his work at Georgia Tech as a postdoctoral fellow to make spectrometers for biosensing applications. Intrigued by biological systems, he joined Shou lab at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and studied stability and spatial organization of microbial communities in synthetic communities.

@bmomeni on Twitter

ResearchGate profile

Google Scholar profile

Biology department profile

Marco Zaccaria, Postdoctoral Researcher

Before joining the lab in 2016, Marco received his Bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences and Master's degree in Ecobiology from the Sapienza University of Rome. He received a PhD in Environmental and Evolutionary Biology through a joint program with the University of Florence (Università degli Studi di Firenze), where his doctoral work focused on convergent evolution between fungi and cancer. Marco is particularly interested in microbial evolution and bioremediation. In his current work, he studies the potential of microbial communities to degrade mycotoxins, which are abundant in the food system. He enjoys petting cats, reading, traveling, and "most nerdy things".

Natalie Sandlin, Graduate Student

Natalie is a graduate student at Boston College pursuing her Ph.D in biology. She is interested in molecular microbiology and bioremediation. Currently, she is studying the potential of microbial communities to degrade mycotoxins, common food contaminants. Natalie received her B.S. in Biology with a concentration in Molecular Biology from the University of Dallas in 2018. Outside of lab, she enjoys reading, traveling, and baking.

M. Javad Akbari, Graduate Student

Vaishnavi Warrier, Graduate Student

Vaishnavi is a graduate student pursuing her PhD at Boston College Biology department. She plans to study the microbial interactions of the human nasal microbiota. Her interests are microbiology and protein biochemistry. Vaishnavi pursued her Masters in Biotechnology from Dr. D.Y. Patil University, India. Outside of the lab, she enjoys going on hikes, travelling, music, and dance.

Paola Rosario Garcia, Undergraduate Researcher

Ethan Rappaport, Undergraduate Researcher

Eric Zhou, Undergraduate Researcher

Leo Deng, Undergraduate Researcher

Alina Chen, Undergraduate Researcher

Joey Zama-Lenfest, Undergraduate Researcher

Luke Maresca, Undergraduate Researcher

Margaret Jiang, Undergraduate Researcher

Lilly Adler, Undergraduate Researcher

Lydia Chen, Undergraduate Researcher

Michelle Kim, Undergraduate Researcher

Philip Chen, Undergraduate Researcher

Philip is an undergraduate student at Boston College studying Biology with a background in Economics. He has research interests in evolutionary microbiology and genome sequencing. In his free time, he enjoys sketching, filmmaking, and playing football (not the American one).

Olivia Addeo, Undergraduate Researcher

Arushi Katyal, Undergraduate Researcher

Undergraduate Research Opportunities

Please contact Babak to discuss your interests and available projects (ideally a few weeks before the beginning of each semester).

Former members

2023

Caroline Bald

Undergraduate Researcher

Yu Zhu

Undergraduate Researcher

Sydney Sanchez Tejada

Undergraduate Researcher

Alexandra Boehning

Undergraduate Researcher

Jiu Lee

Undergraduate Researcher

Nicole Cho

Undergraduate Researcher

2022

John Kim

Undergraduate Researcher

Nick Stratigakis

Undergraduate Researcher

Alec Lobanov

Undergraduate Researcher

Junqing “Simon” Xu

Undergraduate Researcher

2021

Samantha Dyckman, Graduate Student

As a graduate student at Boston College, Sam is most interested in microbial community ecology. After receiving her Bachelor's degree from Ramapo College of New Jersey in 2014, she studied hybridomas at Santa Cruz Biotech in California. Sam enjoys reading, board games, and playing soccer.

Sandra Dedrick, Graduate Student

Sandra studied the interspecies interactions of the human nasal microbiota in collaboration with the Liu lab at Harvard Medical School / Channing Institute of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Previous research has demonstrated that certain commensal bacteria of the nasal microbiome produce compounds that inhibit the growth of opportunistic pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pneumoniae. In her work, Sandra investigated the mechanisms by which: 1) commensals interact with pathogenic bacteria and, 2) commensals interact with one another.

Helen Kurkjian, Postdoctoral Researcher

Helen is an ecologist whose current work is motivated by two broad questions: 1) how does the movement of individuals affect population growth, persistence, extinction, and recolonization? and 2) how are these effects mediated by the physical landscape? She joined the lab as a postdoc in 2018 with plans to investigate these questions in microbial systems. She completed her PhD in 2018 at UC Berkeley, where she studied how connectivity in metapopulations affects recolonization and recovery following subpopulation extinctions. She received an MS in Biology from Humboldt State University in 2012 and her BA from New York University in 2007.

Judy Ly

Undergraduate Researcher

Darius Russell Kish

Undergraduate Researcher

Sixto Taveras

Undergraduate Researcher

Laura Fan

High School Volunteer, 2021-2021 (Currently: Staten Island Technical High School, NYC). Laura won 2nd Place in the New York City Science Engineering Fair (NYCSEF) based on her work on “Utilizing Bioinformatics to Identify Enzymes with the Potential of Aflatoxin Degradation”