The HMohammed Lab operates within the Cancer Early Detection Advanced Research Center (CEDAR) at Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute. CEDAR is dedicated to researching new methods to detect and eliminate lethal cancers early.
Meet our Team Members
Hisham did his PhD at the University of Cambridge (UK) in Prof Jason Carroll’s lab. There, he developed the RIME proteomics method and uncovered novel mechanisms regulating hormone receptors in cancer. He did his post-doctoral training in Prof Wolf Reik’s lab at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge. At the Reik lab, he studied how the epigenome regulates establishment of fundamental lineages in the embryo using single-cell approaches. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the department of medical and molecular genetics at OHSU and also faculty at the early cancer detection center (CEDAR) at the Knight Cancer Institute.
Hisham Mohammed, PhD. 
Assistant Professor of Molecular and Medical Genetics, OHSU
Aaron is a computational biologist working in CEDAR’s Computation Hub. He specializes in single cell analysis, working with existing tools in the transcriptome and epigenome space. He also works to develop new tools in these spaces to better analyze cancer cells and uncover their underlying heterogeneity, both individually in these omics as well as in the multiomic space.
Senior Research Assistant, CEDAR
Aysegul uses single-cell transcriptomic and multi-omic assays to study the role of transcriptional, genetic and epigenetic heterogeneity in tumors. She’s interested in uncovering the role of heterogeneity in tissue transformation and tumor progression in hormone responsive cancers such as breast cancer. She conducted her PhD research at the Institute of Advanced Biosciences in Grenoble, France and Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey for which she studied the role of histone variants in the epigenetic regulation of transcription and mitosis.
Postdoctoral Scholar, CEDAR
Cigdem’s research interests revolve around developing machine learning algorithms that enable scientific discovery from heterogeneous data (e.g., different omics data). Her main focus has been to learn good feature representations and similarity measures by developing theoretically well-founded algorithms that uncover underlying mechanisms of cancer biology. Currently, she is integrating novel, scalable, and interpretable machine learning solutions into understanding single cell analysis.
Postdoctoral Scholar, CEDAR
MacKenzie (Mac) is a Research Assistant II at the Knight Cancer Institute, with a major in Biology and minior in Chemistry from WSU Vancouver. While their eventual goal is to obtain a Ph.D in Biochemistry and dive headfirst cancer research, they currently apply their skills to assist in research towards tumor heterogeneity and it’s effect on hormone-responsive cancers.
Research Assistant II, CEDAR
Mithila Handu has experience studying gene regulatory mechanism in different model systems – Drosophila, macaques and mice. She is interested in amalgamating genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics to understand the molecular landscape in cancer. Her current focus is to study heterogeneity in prostate cancer using single cell multi-omic technologies. She received her Ph.D. from the IISER, Pune, India and did her postdoctoral training at OHSU.
Senior Research Associate, CEDAR
Ruslan joined CEDAR as a Specialist in April 2019. His research is focused on developing spatially resolved single cell technologies to study early breast cancer. In particular, he is interested in understanding how interplay between genetic and epigenetic cellular heterogeneity contributes to progression of indolent to invasive disease in context of the tumor microenvironment. Ruslan obtained his PhD at the University of Glasgow and did his postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge.
Ryan recently graduated from the Molecular and Medical Genetics PhD program at OHSU, defending his work on novel single-cell omics assays for the interrogation of cortical development. Ryan specializes in the development of new protocols for high-throughput single-cell omics technologies, particularly chromatin accessibility and methylation. At CEDAR, Ryan will focus on applying these methods and more to the study of underlying mechanisms of breast and pancreatic tumor progression.
Postdoctoral Scholar, CEDAR
Yahong is interested in utilizing single cell sequencing and bulk sequencing platforms to understand the progression of early breast cancer. Prior to joining CEDAR, Yahong was a senior scientist in industry who developed cell-based assays for preclinical screening of anti-cancer drugs. She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Indiana University Bloomington and her postdoctoral training in colorectal cancer research at Washington University in St. Louis.
Postdoctoral Scholar, CEDAR
Alumni
Arjun joined CEDAR as an intern during his senior year of high school, where he conducted an independent computational-based project titled “Single Cell Modeling of Breast Cancer Heterogeneity”. After his senior year, Arjun decided to take a gap year where he rejoined CEDAR in a part-time paid position as a Student Worker. In this role, Arjun worked as a computational biologist, analyzing single-cell RNA data and proteomic data for a variety of projects.
fffStudent Worker, CEDAR