Events & News

December 11, 2023: Audrey Kidd (BME PhD student) joined the Fallahi Lab. Welcome Audrey!

December 6, 2023: We celebrated everyone’s accomplishments in 2023 with a group dinner, gift exchange and a little bit of fun with bowling! :)

December 2, 2023: Another busy day for the lab, while lab members attend the 2023 Commonwealth of Virginia Cancer Research Conference in Charlottesville. Magda and Yoni gave talks and Luisa and Kim presented posters on their PhD research. Congratulations to all!

November 15, 2023: Zeinab Chitforoushzadeh joined the Fallahi Lab as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in BME. Welcome, Zeinab!

October 11, 2023: Our lab is having an exciting and busy week as we are all participating and presenting research at three conferences. Yoni, Cara and Luisa are presenting their PhD work at the 2023 International Conference in Systems Biology (ICSB) meeting in Hartford, Connecticut. Magda and Kim are presenting their PhD work at the Cold Springe Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) meeting on Cell State Conversions. Henry is presenting his undergraduate research work at the 2023 Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) meeting in Seattle. Congratulations to all of us! :)

August 3, 2023: Gina and Henry presented their posters at the final Multi-Scale Systems Bioengineering and Biomedical Data Sciences REU symposium. The title of Gina’s presentation was “Inferring the role of AP-1 protein dimerization in melanoma differentiation state heterogeneity via multivariate modeling “, and the title of Henry’s presentation was “Uncovering chromatin regulator co-dependencies in melanoma through the integration of CRISPR screen and transcriptomics data“. Congratulations to both Gina and Henry, and congrats to their graduate student mentors, Yoni and Luisa, for their wonderful mentorship!

July 20, 2023: Cara officially graduated from the Fallahi-Sichani Lab. She will be moving to Boston and will begin her new job at Vindhya Data Science! We celebrated one more time together! Congratulations, Cara! We wish you the best!

June 26, 2023: We celebrated our group’s accomplishments in the past 6 years, appointment of Yoni and Magda to the Systems Biology and Cancer Biology Training Programs. We also welcomed Gina and Henry as our REU students this summer!

May 16, 2023: We celebrated Cara’s graduation, Henry and Kim joining the lab this Spring, and Shahab starting a new position at UVA School of Data Science, together with a warm and delicious dinner! Congratulations to all!

April 5, 2023: Cara did a fantastic job, defending her PhD thesis and presenting a wonderful seminar. We could not be more proud! Congratulations, Dr. Abecunas!

March 1, 2023: Kim Nguyen (MSTP student) joined the Fallahi Lab. Welcome Kim!

January 3, 2023: Mohammad was a recipient of 2023 BMES CMBE Rising Star Award! The CMBE Rising Star Award recognizes a BMES-CMBE SIG member who is at their early independent career stage and has made an outstanding impact on the field of cellular and molecular bioengineering.

October 22, 2022: Cara, Yoni and Mohammad had a good time representing the lab, presenting research, and networking at the 2022 Systems Approaches to Cancer Biology (SACB) Meeting in beautiful Woods Hole, Massachusetts. 

October 16, 2022: Cara and Natacha presented their PhD work in the Systems Biology track of the 2022 BMES Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas. The title of Cara’s talk was: “Systematic analysis uncovers SYK dependency in NF1-LoF melanoma cells”, and Natacha presented her work: “AP-1 transcription factor network explains diverse patterns of cellular plasticity in melanoma“.

September 19, 2022: Cara won the first trainee travel award for an outstanding presentation to the Cancer Biology program of the UVA Cancer Center for her presentation: “Systematic analysis uncovers SYK dependency in NF1 loss-of-function melanoma”. Congratulations, Cara!

August 26, 2022: Luisa presented her PhD work at the 2022 NCI Junior Investigator Meeting and won a poster presentation award. Congratulations, Luisa and way to go!

July 26, 2022: We celebrated our amazing lab members’ accomplishments in a busy summer, and said farewell to Anna and Ariana (our summer research students) and Mehwish, who is moving on to a start a new position as a senior scientist at Dewpoint Therapeutics, Inc. in Boston. Congratulations, Anna, Ariana, and Mehwish! We wish you all the best in your exciting adventures!

June 30, 2022: Natacha officially graduated as the first PhD of Fallahi-Sichani Lab. She will be moving to New York city to start a new academic adventure as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Columbia University. Congratulations, Natacha! We wish you the best!

March 25, 2022: Lab celebrated Natacha’s PhD thesis defense with pizza and video games!

March 16, 2022: Natacha did a fantastic job, defending her PhD thesis and presenting a wonderful seminar. We could not be more proud! Congratulations, Dr. Comandante-Lou!

February 21, 2022: Magda Bujnowska (MSTP student) joined the Fallahi Lab. Welcome Magda!

December 20, 2021: Yonatan Degefu (BME PhD student) joined the Fallahi Lab. Welcome Yoni!

Dec 10, 2021: Time to review some of the lab’s nice memories of 2021!

October 9, 2021: Cara and Natacha presented their PhD work in the 2021 Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida. The title of Cara’s talk was: “Multi-targeted kinase inhibitor MTX-216 exploits dependency on SYK to selectively block NF1LoF melanomas”, and Natacha presented her work: “The AP-1 Transcription Factor Network Links Heterogeneity in Melanoma Differentiation State to the Diversity of MAPK Inhibitor-Induced Adaptive Responses“.

June 1, 2021: Fallahi-Sichani Lab was awarded a one-year research grant from the Harry J Lloyd Charitable Trust, which will allow us to begin testing new ways to target cell plasticity in melanoma tumors in order to overcome their resistance to standard-of-care targeted and immunotherapies.

May 27, 2021: Cara joins Ribon Therapeutics, Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts to complete a three-month summer internship in the Discovery Biology group, contributing to the collection and analysis of pre-clinical data from various large-scale screening assays, with the goal of identifying novel vulnerabilities in cancer stress support pathways.

May 1, 2021: Fallahi-Sichani Lab received a new R01 award from the NCI (R01-CA249229), which will allow us to work toward the understanding of the interplay between genetic, epigenetic and signaling mechanisms that determine the state of MAP kinase (MAPK) pathway dependency in tumor cells. Such understanding will be key to our ability to predict and ultimately improve the responsiveness of tumor cells to therapeutic inhibitors of MAPK signaling. Our primary focus, in this project, is on BRAF-V600 mutated melanomas, where hyperactivation of MAPK signaling has motivated the clinical use of MAPK-targeted therapies, but they often lead to variable responses and no durable cure in most patients.

December 17, 2020: Luisa Quesada (BME PhD student) joined the Fallahi Lab. Welcome Luisa!

October 17, 2020: Cara and Natacha presented their PhD work in the virtual 2020 Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting. Cara spoke about “Unveiling the mechanism of action of MTX-216 in overcoming drug resistance in NF1-mutant melanomas”, and Natacha presented her work: “The AP-1 Transcription Factor Network Links Heterogeneity in Melanoma Differentiation State to the Diversity of MAPK Inhibitor-Induced Adaptive Responses“.

July 20, 2020: Congratulations to Doug Baumann, who has been awarded a fellowship from the UVa Cancer Center for his project: “Cell-to-cell variability in AP-1 regulatory network explains multiple paths of drug resistance in melanoma”.

May 20, 2020: Cara will be presenting her research in the AACR Virtual Annual Meeting II, being organized online (due to the COVID-19 pandemic) between June 22-24, 2020. She will be presenting an e-poster, describing her research on “Selective inhibition of NF1 loss-of-function driven oncogenic signaling in melanomas”.

May 17, 2020: We are excited to announce that the Fallahi-Sichani laboratory will be relocating to the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville on June 1, 2020. We are seeking motivated and committed students and postdoctoral fellows to join the team.

March 5, 2020: Mehwish will be attending the AACR Special Conference on Evolutionary Dynamics in Carcinogenesis and Response to Therapy in Denver, CO (March 12-15, 2020). She will be presenting a poster, describing her research on “The dynamic influence of histone lysine demethylases in therapy-induced phenotype switching and cell heterogeneity in BRAF-mutant melanoma cells”.

December 6, 2019: The lab celebrated everyone’s accomplishments in 2019 with a very delicious potluck dinner party and board games!

October 2, 2019: Cara, Natacha and Mohammad will be attending the 2019 BMES Annual Meeting in Philadelphia (Oct 16-19).  Cara will be giving an oral presentation describing her research on “Selective Inhibition of NF1 Loss-of-Function Driven Oncogenic Signaling in Melanomas” in the session for “Systems Approaches to Therapy, Therapeutics, and Precision Medicine”. Natacha will be giving an oral presentation describing her research on “Probabilistic Phenotype Metrics for Characterizing Heterogeneous Tumor Cell Drug Responses and Their Combined Interactions” in the session for “Single Cell Measurements and Models”.
September 1, 2019: The lab was awarded a Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) from the NIGMS, focused on: “Decoding the Logic of Cellular Signaling Through the Integration of Dynamic, Single-Cell and Multiplexed Methods”.
June 7, 2019: The lab was awarded the Turner-McConnell Fund for Drug Discovery from the Rogel Cancer Center for research focused on cancer drug target identification and validation in collaboration with the laboratory of Judy Leopold. The proposal focuses on selective inhibition of NF1 loss-of-function driven oncogenic signaling in human cancers such as melanoma.
April 30, 2019: Mohammad will participate in the 2019 V Foundation for Cancer Research Scholar Summit. He will be joining fellow V Foundation Scholars at the 4th Annual V Scholar Summit in Rochester, MN to share the lab’s cancer research.
December 7, 2018: The lab celebrated everyone’s accomplishments in 2018 with saving Tony in Clueless Escape Rooms and a nice dinner!

November 30, 2018: Mohammad spoke at the Department of Bioengineering in the University of Maryland, College Park. 
November 8, 2018: Mohammad presented the lab’s cancer research at Rogel Cancer Center in the Cancer Biology/Genetics Program meeting.
October 13, 2018: Natacha and Mohammad will be attending the 2018 BMES Annual Meeting in Atlanta (Oct 17-20). Natacha will be presenting a poster describing her research on “Phenotypic Kinetic Metrics to Characterize Heterogeneous Cancer Cell Drug Response”.
September 28, 2018: Mehwish was awarded the Best Poster Presentation Prize at the 6th Annual Cancer Biology Retreat. Congratulations, Mehwish!
September 1, 2018: The lab was awarded a 3-year grant from Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP), aimed at defining and targeting novel epigenetic vulnerabilities in heterogeneous drug-resistant melanomas.  
June 18, 2018: Doug Baumann joined the lab as a postdoc. Welcome Doug!
April 30, 2018: Congratulations to Mehwish for being offered a postdoctoral appointment in the Cancer Biology T32 Training Program of the University of Michigan.
April 24, 2018: Mohammad participates in the 2018 V Foundation for Cancer Research Scholar Summit. He will be joining fellow V Foundation Scholars at the 3rd Annual V Scholar Summit in Fairfax, VA to share the lab’s cancer research.
Feb 12, 2018: Cara Abecunas (BME PhD student) joined the Fallahi Lab.
Jan 4, 2018: Lauren Bailey (Cancer Biology PhD student) started her rotation in the Fallahi Lab.
Dec 14, 2017: Congratulations to Natacha for winning a highly competitive Rackham International Student Fellowship award.
Dec 13, 2017: Mohammad spoke at the 1st International Conference on Epigenetics and Bioengineering (EpiBio 2017) in Miami, FL.
Nov 10, 2017: Natacha presented her research at the Engineering Graduate Symposium.
Nov 6, 2017: Mehwish Khaliq joined the lab as a postdoc. Welcome Mehwish!
Sep 29, 2017: Mohammad was awarded a V Foundation for Cancer Research V Scholar Award.
Sep 8, 2017: Fallahi Lab was awarded a one-year research grant from the Elsa Pardee Foundation. Pardee Foundation grants are devoted to cancer research with cutting-edge ideas, discovering new approaches for cancer treatment and cure.
Aug 12, 2017: Fallahi lab renovation project and biosafety inspection completed. With incredible help from lab members, Natacha Lou Comandante (our first BME PhD student) and Mohan Manikkam (our lab manager), the Fallahi Lab is officially open and functional!
May 1, 2017: Mohammad received an R00 Pathway to Independence Award from the NIH/NCI.
May 1, 2017: Mohammad started his new position as an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan.