Principal Investigator
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Roger Abounader is a molecular, cellular and translational neuro-oncology researcher. He completed his MD and PhD degrees at the University of Heidelberg in Germany and a postdoctoral fellowship at McGill University in Canada. He was appointed tenure-track assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University before being recruited by the University of Virginia. He is currently a tenured full professor in the departments of Microbiology, Immunology & Cancer Biology and Neurology. He is also the Arthur and Margaret Ebbert Endowed Chair of Medical Science and serves as Assistant Director at the University of Virginia Cancer Center.

Assistant Professor
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Ying Zhang earned her PhD in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology from University of Hull, UK. She served as a postdoctoral fellow at NIH NIDCR in 2015. She joined University of Virginia as a Research Scientist and then as a Research Assistant Professor from 2008 to present. She studies the mechanistic role of Receptor Tyrosine Kinases (RTKs), p53, and non-coding RNAs.  She also conducts translational research on experimental therapeutics in glioblastoma (GBM).  Ying also serves as the lab manager for the Abounader Lab.

Post-Doctoral Fellow
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Elizabeth received her BS/BA from the University of Virginia where she doubled majored in Biochemistry and Physics and minored in Mathematics. She went on to get her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in Biophysics. She joined the lab in summer 2018. She is currently working on finding and testing master regulatory microRNAs (miRNAs) in GBM.

Graduate Research Assistant
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Myron Gibert Jr is from Fort Washington, MD. He received a B.S. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from Hampton University and a M.S. in Life and Physical Sciences from the University of Virginia. He joined the lab in 2017 as a graduate research assistant, and currently works on the project concerning transcribed ultra-conserved regions in GBM. In addition to his research, Myron performs some bioinformatics and data analysis for the lab.

Graduate Research Assistant
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Collin received a B.S. in Biochemistry from Rowan University. After graduation he worked as a microbiologist at a pharmaceutical company performing method development on new therapeutics. After working a few years, he went back to school where he received a M.S. in Biotechnology with a concentration in Molecular Targets and Drug Discovery Technologies from Johns Hopkins University. Following graduation, he worked under the guidance of Dr. Rekha Panchal and Dr. Veronica Soloveva at United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Disease performing high throughput drug screening and assay development. Collin joined the lab in 2018 as a graduate student and currently works assessing the roles and therapeutic targeting of T-type calcium channels in GBM.

Graduate Research Assistant
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Katherine earned a B.S. in Cell and Molecular Biology with a minor in Chemistry from Appalachian State University. She continued her undergraduate research focused on the regulatory role of RNA-binding proteins in nociceptor sensitivity and earned her M.S. from Appalachian State University in December 2018. After graduation, she worked as a research technician at UNC-Chapel Hill where she contributed to multiple projects focused on the role of primary cilia in neural development and disease. Katherine joined the lab in 2020 as a graduate student. Currently, she is investigating a subset of transcribed ultra-conserved regions in GBM and is also testing the therapeutic potential of novel biotechnology in GBM.

Lab Technician
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Rossymar Rivera Colón obtained her BS in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Puerto Rico in Ponce. Last summer she worked at Abounader´s lab as a summer intern from the Summer Research Internship Program (SRIP). Recently, she joined the lab in January 2020 as a laboratory technician. She is currently working on the "Metastasis Project" in which she is investigating whether microRNAs are involved in the process of brain cancer metastasis.