People

David is the principal investigator of the lab and runs the Inflammatory Disease Genetics Clinic in the Department of Medicine. He received his B.A. from Brown University in the Departments of History and Biology. He earned his M.D./Ph.D. from New York University in the laboratory of Dr. Danny Reinberg. He continued with clinical training in the clinician scientist pathway in Internal Medicine at Columbia University and then went on to perform Clinical Genetics training at the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins combined program. David performed his postdoctoral research with Dr. Dan Kastner at the National Institutes of Health.

Sam is an MD/PhD candidate within the New York University Grossman School of Medicine’s Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP). His work revolves around elucidating the mechanism of disease in patients with VEXAS and  characterizing the role of the master regulator of the Ubiquitin-Proteasome System (UPS), UBA1, in physiological and disease states.  He received his B.A. in Biochemistry from Columbia University.  He earned his MPhil in Biological Sciences from the University of Cambridge in the laboratory of Prof. George Salmond.  Prior to joining the NYU GSoM MSTP, Sam was an IRTA fellow at the National Institutes of Health where he worked in the group of Dr. Heather Hickman examining mechanisms of adaptive immunity in the setting of viral infection.  In his free time Sam enjoys entrepreneurship, reading and writing science fiction, and caring for his pet chameleon Clive.

Brecca is a  PhD candidate in the Computational Biomedicine program at NYU with Dr. Kelly Ruggles as her co-mentor. Brecca’s current work involves characterizing genetic, transcriptomic, and proteomic markers of autoinflammatory diseases. Brecca graduated from University of Florida with a major in Biomedical Engineering and worked on studying allele specific expression and computational tool development in the lab of Dr. Lauren McIntyre. She enjoys  hiking, rock climbing, and listening to music.

Niharika is a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory and currently studying the mechanism underlying rare genetic diseases. She received her B.Sc and M.Sc. degree from the Banasthali University, Rajasthan, India.  Her Ph.D. involved the immune signaling in the Vitiligo disease which she has done with Dr. Davinder Parsad (PGIMER, Chandigarh, India) and Dr. Sarika Gupta (Banasthali University, Rajasthan, India).

Flore is a post-doctoral fellow, working on bioinformatic approaches to characterize somatic mutations. She received her M.Sc. degree from the multidisciplinary engineering school ESPCI in Paris and her Ph.D. from the embryology lab at the University of Tokyo. Her thesis research revealed the immune influence of maternal cells on the development of the neonatal immune system in mice, combining wet and dry lab. She’s also a jack of all trades in her hobbies, enjoying crafts, games as well as performances and outdoor activities.

Mei-Kay is a board-certified genetic counselor and public health professional interested in patient advocacy and health equity. She received her B.S. in Biology and Psychology at the University of Notre Dame before earning her M.S.in Genetic Counseling as well as her M.P.H. in Public Health Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, where she was awarded a fellowship from the New York Mid-Atlantic Consortium (NYMAC) for Genetic and Newborn Screening Services. When not coordinating clinical care or research studies delving into the genetic mechanisms of known or (as of now) undiagnosed disorders of inflammation, she enjoys playing volleyball, finding her next favorite song, and snacking.

Daniela is currently characterizing novel mutations causing autoinflammatory diseases. She received her B.S. from the University of Maryland, Baltimore county, and was previously an IRTA fellow at the National Institutes of Health. She is currently a genetic counseling student at University of Maryland continuing to work with the Beck lab.

Mary is a research associate in the laboratory. She is currently using exome and genome sequencing data to try to identify new genetic drivers of disease. Mary graduated from Saint Michael’s College with a BA in general biology and a minor in chemistry. She worked at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center as a lab assistant in the Clinical Genomics and Advanced Technologies Lab as well as the Microbiology Lab. Mary will receive a master’s degree in applied genomics from the University of Connecticut in December 2022,

Sachiko has an undergraduate degree in Neuroscience and a concentration in Statistics from Columbia University. She is currently a Research Associate in the Beck Lab establishing the autoimmune inflammatory disease VEXAS in mouse models. Sachiko is also a competitive archer and enjoy shooting on weekends.

Defne is a research associate working on the genetic architecture of autoimmune diseases. She is interested in using large scale data to identify associations between clinical phenotypes and genomic traits. She is also part of the IBD research team at NYU Langone under Dr. Jordan Axelrad. She received a B.S. in computational and systems biology with a concentration in bioinformatics from UCLA, where she completed her thesis work in the diversity of genomic features detectable by exome sequecning in Dr. Noah Zaitlen’s lab. Other than genomics, she completed a minor in art history in UCLA and a certificate program in Art & Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art.

Deborah Hernandez is the lab manager for the Beck Lab. She has extensive experience as a technician and lab manager with Dr. Danny Reinberg first at UMDNJ and then more recently at NYU.