People | Elston Lab

2023 Elston Lab

Principal Investigator

Tim Elston
Professor
telston@med.unc.edu
I am interested in understanding the dynamics of complex biological systems and developing reliable mathematical models that capture the essential components of these systems

Graduate Students

Keith Breau
CellBiology & Physiology Graduate Student
kbro9@email.unc.edu
I am interested in stem cell differentiation, cell polarity, and collective migration. I study the human intestinal epithelium, where a dedicated pool of rapidly-dividing stem cells transition into migrating differentiated cells in one of the most expansive examples of directed collective cell migration in the adult body.
Read more….

Alex Crocker
BCB Graduate Student
dinosaur@live.unc.edu
I study how fungi control the location and number of polarity sites in their cells, and how changes in cell polarity affect cell morphology and function.
Read more….

Elizabeth Davis
BCB Graduate Student
emae@med.unc.edu
Cell migration is a crucial aspect of many biological processes. External signaling guides cells through the detection of stimuli in the extracellular matrix (ECM) that influences their movement. The method of guided cell migration that I am studying is durotaxis, where cells preferentially move towards stiffer regions of the ECM where they are guided by local protrusions called pseudopods.
Read more….

Nathan Smyers
BCB Graduate Student
smyersn@email.unc.edu

Saygin Gulec
BCB Graduate Student
sayging@live.unc.edu

Grace Mclaughlin
Biology Graduate Student
gamclaug@live.unc.edu

Postdoctoral Fellows

Research Associate

Sandy Hahn
Research Associate
sshahn@email.unc.edu

Alumni

Cody Herron
Senior Scientist (Quantitative Systems Pharmacology), Pfizer
Sam Ramirez
Machine Learning Engineer II, Eurofins Discovery
Richard Allen
Research Scientist, Pfizer
Marcelo Behar
Assistant Professor, University of Texas at Austin
John Fricks
Assistant Professor of Statistics, Penn State University
Yan Fu
Data Scientist at Kforce Inc.
Guilherme Garcia
Assistant Professor, Medical College of Wisconsin
Mike Goedeke
Research Triangle Institute, NC
Nan Hao
Assistant Professor, University of California, San Diego
John Houser
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Texas, Austin
Meng Jin
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, San Diego
Josh Kelley
Assistant Professor, University of Maine
Kevin Kesseler
AdderStone Predictive Analytics
Vinal Lakhani
Postdoctoral Fellow, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus OH
Kang-Ling Liao
Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, Tamkang University
Patrick McCarter
Postdoctoral Fellow, UNC-CH
Callie Miller
Professor, James Madison Univeristy
Maria Minakova
Facebook
Jason Pirone
Biomathematician, SRA International, Inc., Durham, NC.
Conner Sandefur
Assistant Professor, UNC Pembroke
Adrian Serohijos
Assistant Professor, University of Montreal
Wanda Strychalski
Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, Case Western Reserve University
Abby Todd
Professor at Greenville College, Illinois
Denis Tsygankov
Assistant Professor at The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory Universities
Sai Venkatapurapu
Immunetrics
Xiao Wang
Assistant Professor, School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, Arizona State University
Necmettin Yildrim
Assistant Professor, New College of Florida
Peiying Zuo
Glaxo Smith Kline
Kaiyun (Kathy) Guan
Revolution Medicines