Principal Investigator
Roger Larken Chang
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Systems & Computational Biology
Dept. of Biochemistry
Roger started his lab in the Department of Systems & Computational Biology and Department of Biochemistry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 2022. He completed a B.A. in Molecular & Cell Biology at UC Berkeley, postbacc with Richard Scheuermann at UT Southwestern, and Ph.D. in Bioinformatics & Systems Biology with Bernhard Palsson and Phil Bourne at UC San Diego, where he pioneered the integration of protein 3D structure analysis with omic-scale systems modeling to study the effects of diverse physicochemical stresses on bacterial and human systems.
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He completed his postdoctoral training in Pam Silver's lab at Harvard Medical School, where he started by integrated proteomic mass spectrometry, structural bioinformatics, and machine learning to study proteome-wide oxidative damage under ionizing radiation in bacteria. He then developed intrinsically disordered proteins inspired by extremotolerant organisms as broadly stabilizing agents in human cells.
​In his lab, Roger studies multi-scale mechanisms of cellular damage by abiotic stresses, especially oxidative stress due to its role in diverse disease and cellular phenotypes (e.g. cancer, aging, neurodegeneration, irradiation, desiccation). He also seeks to leverage understanding of susceptibility and resistance to stress towards engineering new biotechnologies with therapeutic and industrial applications.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Alex Mihnev
Ph.D. Molecular, Cell & Systems Biology, University of Glasgow
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Alex is passionate about drug discovery, personalized medicine, and the development of new computational approaches. He is integrating structure-based predictions of oxidation events as constraints for metabolic network modelling. Some of the applications of this research are found in tailoring cancer treatments to patients, as well as identifying new drug targets.
Graduate Students
Gracelyn Richmond
PhRMA Foundation Drug Deliver Fellow
M.S. Biomedical Sciences, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
B.S. Microbiology, University of Minnesota Twin Cities​​
Grace is interested in understanding and controlling bacterial community response to host stress. She explores this question from an integrative systems biology paradigm, leveraging in vitro and in silico approaches. Her thesis work is optimizing probiotic strain Lactocaseibacillus rhamnosus GG for improved community-level secretion of host-beneficial microbial metabolites.
Juan Sepulveda
M.S. Biomedical Sciences, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
B.S. Molecular and Cellular Biology, Cornell University
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Juan is studying the properties of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins (IDPs) to shield to prevent protein aggregation during oxidative stress. He is modeling the impact of IDPs on capturing Reactive Oxidative Species (ROS) and interaction with target proteins. He is interested in learning the impact of IDPs on the formation of membraneless organelles and how these help regulate gene expression and the cell’s response to stress.
Renae Irving
M.S. Biomedical Sciences, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
B.S. Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Renae is an MSTP student using human metabolic models and multi-omics to investigate the gastrointestinal (GI) cancer space. Their research interests include the healthful and harmful interactions between humans and their microbiome with a focus on GI disease and infection. They are excited for the opportunity to approach these issues from the systems biology perspective.
Sara Mosavarpour
M.S. Biomedical Sciences, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
B.S. Biomolecular Science, New York University
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Sara is modeling pollutant-exposed lungs using multi-omics data and metabolic network modeling to examine signaling pathways and oxidation events. She is co-mentored by Lindsay LaFave and looks forward to integrating computational models and lung biology.
Dana Luong
Einstein PCI Fellow
M.S. Biomedical Sciences, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
B.S. Computational Biology, Cornell University
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Dana is interested in applications of metabolic modeling and structural biology to population-level genomic studies to promote equity in biomedical research and personalized medicine. She is co-mentored by Dr. Srilakshmi Raj within the Program in Clinical Investigation to integrate metabolic modeling with clinical studies to better understand differential disease burden and drug response across diverse populations.
Felipe Vilicich
B.S. in Biotechnology, Universidad Argentina de la Empresa
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Felipe is studying how intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) can contribute to the formation of condensates during anhydrobiosis. He is particularly interested in applying machine learning algorithms to discover novel stress resistance signatures in protein structures. Outside of lab, Felipe enjoys playing musical instruments and occasionally battling Roger on the tennis court.
Previous Members
Divya Periyakoil – Rotation Ph.D. Student, 2025. Current: Ph.D. candidate in Zheng Lab.
Jonah Porat – High School Student, Einstein Summer H.S. Research Program, 2024.
Wenna Chen – Rotation Ph.D. Student, 2024. Current: Ph.D. candidate in Zheng Lab.
Hersh Gupta – Rotation MSTP Student, 2023. Current: Ph.D. candidate in Raj Lab.
Zeke Tesler – High School Student, Einstein Summer H.S. Research Program, 2023. Current: Brown University
Todd Richmann – Rotation Ph.D. Student, 2023. Current: Ph.D. candidate in Huffman Lab.
Advait Pavuluri – High School Student, Einstein Summer H.S. Research Program, 2022. Current: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Nora Lowe – High School Student, 2020-2022. Current: Amherst College