Harvard Biotech Club Leadership
Executive Team
Michelle Boisvert
Co-President
Michelle is a graduate student in Harvard’s Biological and Biomedical Sciences PhD Program. She received her BA in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2019. Michelle is co-advised by Pratiti Bandopadhayay and Rameen Beorukhim, where she is using computational efforts to better characterize pediatric brain tumors.
Binita Shah
Co-President
Binita is a PhD candidate in Harvard’s Biological and Biomedical Sciences program. She received her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University in Cellular and Molecular Biology in 2019. Prior to graduate school, Binita worked at Schrödinger, Inc. in NYC. Currently, she is characterizing deubiquitinating enzymes (DUBs) using structural biology in the laboratories of Eric Fischer and Sara Buhrlage.
Fang Xie
Vice President
Fang is a postdoc at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. He is co-mentored by Drs. Steven Balk and Rupal Bhatt in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at BIDMC, where his research focuses on molecular mechanisms underlying therapeutic resistance in patients with advanced prostate cancer. He is also conducting a drug screen on 3D tumor organoids to identify adjuvants for current therapies in prostate cancer.
Yossef Baidi
Vice President
Director of Career Fair
Yossef is a PhD Candidate in the Chemical Biology program at Harvard. His research in Rameen Beroukhim's lab focuses on tumor evolution in glioblastoma in response to drug treatment.
Isabella Jaén Maisonet
Vice President
Director of Diversity and Inclusion
Isabella is a PhD candidate in Harvard's Chemical Biology Program and the Therapeutics Graduate Program. Her research in the Buhrlage Lab focuses on the development of small molecule probes for deubiquitinating enzymes, with a specific interest in the role this family of enzymes plays in oncology.
Directors of Lecture-based Learning
Nikita Kupko
Director of Patent Law Course
Nikita is a PhD candidate in the Biophysics Program and a member of the Therapeutics Graduate Certificate Program at Harvard University. He works in the laboratory of Dr. Susan Shao at Harvard Medical School.
Hanna Doh
Co-Director of Biotech Public Equity Investment Course
Hanna is a PhD candidate in the Harvard Biological and Biomedical Sciences program. Her thesis work in the lab of Dr. Taru Muranen focuses on molecular mechanisms underlying chemotherapy resistance in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.
Claire Johnson
Co-Director of Biotech Public Equity Investment Course
Claire is a PhD student in the Bioinformatics and Genomics Program. She works on building machine learning models for multi-modal patient data to enable the future of precision oncology and novel cancer biology discovery, advised by Dr. Eliezer Van Allen at Dana-Farber and the Broad institute.
Kanae Sasaki
Director of 101 Series
Kanae is a PhD student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program and the Therapeutics Graduate Program at Harvard University. Her research in the laboratory of Dr. Connie Cepko focuses on creating novel gene therapies to prevent cone photoreceptor cell death in retinitis pigmentosa.
Katia Renault
101 Series Team
Katia Renault is a PhD student in the Molecules, Cells, and Organisms program and the Therapeutics Graduate Program at Harvard University. In Dr. Vadim Gladyshev’s lab, her research centers on the comparative biology of aging, exploring genomics across the animal kingdom to uncover the mechanisms of longevity and age-related decline.
Rhea Sahu
Director of International Initiative
Rhea is a PhD candidate in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program and Therapeutics Graduate program at Harvard. Her work focuses on co-targeting oncogenic and epigenetic pathways in castration-resistant prostate cancer in Dr. Karen Cichowski’s laboratory.
Matthew White
Co-Director of Biotech Public Equity Investment Course
Matthew is a PhD candidate in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program and a member of the Therapeutics Graduate Program at Harvard Medical School. In the lab of Dr. Olivier Pourquié, he uses stem cells to uncover the molecular drivers of human musculoskeletal axis development.
Directors of Hands-On Training
Allison Flores
Co-Director of Engage
Allison is a PhD candidate in Harvard's Chemical Biology Program and the Therapeutics Graduate Program. Within the lab of Dr. George Church at the Wyss Institute, her work focuses on protein engineering technology development with genetically encoded non-standard amino acids.
Antonio Arciniegas
Co-Director of Harvard Biotech Incubator
Antonio is an MD research scientist in the Pulmonary and Critical Care Division at BWH, working at the Baron Lab, conducting translational studies from the bench to the clinical trials, focusing on sepsis and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). He studies the role of microRNAs, microbiome and Zinc during sepsis and lung injury.
Muhammad Ahmad
Director of Explore
Ahmad is a Ph.D. candidate in Biology and Biomedical Sciences Program. His research in Dr. Norbert Perrimon's lab focuses on developing CRISPR-Cas9 based screening to identify new signaling components for GPCR signaling that may serve as therapeutic targets to treat obesity and obesity-related diseases.
Nicolas Gort Freitas
Co-Director of Crossover
Nico is a PhD candidate in the Systems, Synthetic and Quantitative Biology program. His thesis work at Allon Klein's lab involves studying variability in human hematopoiesis and the role of innate immunity in immunotherapy. In his free time, Nico plays bass in the GSAS jazz band. He also enjoys dancing, doing anything outdoors, and playing soccer.
Talha Rehman
Co-Director of Crossover
Talha is a PhD student in the Applied Physics program. Previously, he pursued undergraduate degree in physics at Berea College, and participated in the Bridge to the Ph.D. Program at Columbia University.
Ilzat Ali
Co-Director of Harvard Biotech Incubator. and Co-Director of Site Visits
Ilzat is a PhD candidate in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program at Harvard. In the laboratory of Dr. Jeffrey Dvorin, he utilizes cutting-edge microscopy techniques to uncover essential processes in the complex life cycle of the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum. LinkedIn
Katlyn Gabriel
Co-Director of Harvard Biotech Incubator, and Communications Team
Katlyn is a graduate student in the Biological Sciences and Public Health Program and the Therapeutics Graduate Program. Her research in the Greka Lab aims to streamline therapeutic discovery for rare disease variants utilizing genetic perturbation libraries and high-throughput imaging analysis. Currently, her research is focused in discovering novel regulators of peroxisomal biology or related disorders.
Email: kgabriel@broadinstitute.org
Luke Murphy
Co-Director of Engage, Co-Director of Info Sessions
Luke is a PhD candidate in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program at Harvard. In the lab of Dr. Alexander Soukas at Massachusetts General Hospital, his work focuses on uncovering novel genetic mechanisms of longevity in Caenorhabditis elegans.
Directors of Professional Development
Monica Cassandras
Director of Industry Networking
Monica is a PhD student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences graduate program at Harvard. Her thesis work in Dr. Judith Agudo’s lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute focuses on identifying mechanisms of immune evasion in breast cancer metastasis.
Yasmine Ayman
Co-Director of Career Fair
Yasmine is a Ph.D student in the Neuroscience Program at Harvard Medical School . She combines cutting-edge tools in systems neuroscience and molecular neurobiology to understand the molecular mechanisms of network stability during navigational decision making in the lab of Dr. Christopher Harvey. She is interested in using her research to inform treatments for psychiatric disorders.
Danika Rodrigues
Co-Director of Info Sessions
Danika is a PhD candidate in the Bioengineering program at Harvard. Her thesis work in the lab of Dr. Samir Mitragotri focuses on using a novel approach to develop whole tumor cell vaccines.
Bingchen Li
Co-Director of Connect
Bingchen is a postdoctoral fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. His research is about LNP delivery and cancer biology, focusing on identifying therapeutic targets for rare kidney cancer patients. LinkedIn
Candice Hureaux-Perron
Co-Director of Site Visits
Candice is a Master’s student in Immunology at Harvard Medical School. She received her BEng and MEng in Biomedical Engineering from Imperial College London. She is conducting her thesis research in Dr. Samir Mitragotri’s lab using "cellular backpacks" to enhance T-cell resilience against solid tumors.
Communications Team
Charis Li
Director of Communications
Charis is an MBA and MMSc candidate at Yale School of Management and Harvard Medical School. She received her BA in computational biology and STS (Science, Technology & Society) from Colby College.
Mifrah Hayath
Communications Team
Mifrah Hayath is a Bioethics Master's student at Harvard University with a strong interdisciplinary background in biotechnology and bioethics. She holds a Master’s in Biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University and dual Bachelor’s degrees in Molecular Toxicology and Bioethics from UC Berkeley.
General Leadership
Our team is growing and we’re always looking for talented and passionate new members to help lead HBC into the future.
Interested in joining our leadership team? Please apply here.