Meet the team

Hisham Mohammed, PhD

Principal Investigator · Associate Professor of Molecular and Medical Genetics, OHSU

Hisham is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics at OHSU's Knight Cancer Institute. He did his postdoctoral training in Professor Wolf Reik's lab at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge. In the Reik lab, he studied how the epigenome regulates establishment of fundamental lineages in the embryo using single-cell approaches. He earned his PhD at the University of Cambridge in Professor Jason Carroll's lab, where he developed Rapid Immunoprecipitation Mass Spectrometry of Endogenous Proteins (RIME). Using RIME, he uncovered mechanisms regulating hormone receptors in cancer.

William Scott, BA

PhD Candidate, PBMS

William is a PhD candidate in the Program in Biomedical Sciences (PBMS) studying epigenetic reprogramming and cell state plasticity in luminal breast cancer using integrated wet-lab and computational approaches. He previously served as a research assistant in innate immunology at OHSU. William earned his BA in Biology from Reed College in 2019. Outside the lab, he enjoys exploring the Pacific Northwest and competing in local cyclocross races.

Joseph M. Hwang, BS

PhD Candidate, PBMS

Joseph is a PhD candidate in the Program in Biomedical Sciences (PBMS) interested in how bioinformatic tools can be used to understand epigenetic and transcriptional regulation. He graduated from the University of Oregon with majors in Biology and Human Physiology and a minor in Chemistry.

Jamie Endicott, PhD

Computational Biologist II

Jamie is a Computational Biologist specializing in the intersection of cancer and aging, with a specific focus on heterochromatin erosion and epigenetic instability as primary contributors to cancer risk. She received her PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the Van Andel Institute Graduate School in 2022 in the laboratory of Dr. Peter W. Laird, where she developed and experimentally validated an "epigenetic clock" to estimate cell divisions. Following her doctoral studies, Jamie joined the biotechnology startup Altos Labs as a hybrid biological-computational scientist within the Institute of Computation, a group focused on modeling the biology of aging using traditional bioinformatic tools and machine learning techniques.

Aaron Doe, MS

Computational Biologist II

Aaron Doe is a Computational Biologist specializing in single-cell transcriptomic and epigenomic analysis to understand cancer development at high resolution. He builds on existing bioinformatic frameworks and develops computational pipelines for single-cell and spatial sequencing datasets. His analytical workflows are specifically designed to uncover intra-tumoral heterogeneity by analyzing molecular layers both individually (single-omics) and integratively (multi-omics). Aaron holds an MS in Bioinformatics from the University of Oregon.

Ruslan Strogantsev, PhD

Staff Scientist

Ruslan is a Staff Scientist interested in understanding how the interplay between genetic and epigenetic cellular heterogeneity contributes to the progression from indolent to invasive disease in the tumor microenvironment. He focuses on developing spatially resolved single-cell technologies to study early breast cancer. He did his postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge and obtained his PhD at the University of Glasgow.

Aysegul Ors, PhD

Assistant Staff Scientist

Aysegul is an Assistant Staff Scientist studying the role of transcriptional, genetic, and epigenetic heterogeneity in tumors using single-cell transcriptomic and multiomic sequencing assays. She aims to uncover the role of hormone signaling heterogeneity in tissue transformation and tumor progression in breast cancer. She joined the lab as a postdoctoral scholar, where she defined estrogen-responsive transcriptional cell states in ER+ breast cancer. Aysegul pursued a joint PhD in Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Institute of Advanced Biosciences in Grenoble, France, and Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, studying the role of histone variants in the epigenetic regulation of transcription and mitosis. She holds a Bioengineering degree (BEng+MEng) from the University of Technology of Compiègne in France.

Atef Siddiqui

Intern

Atef is an intern in the Mohammed Lab and a student at Catlin Gabel School. He supports the team's research through the computational analysis of RIME datasets and by assisting with bench science. He also leads the design, development, and maintenance of the laboratory's web infrastructure and digital communications.

Ezra Mayan

Intern

Ezra is a high school intern in the lab, currently attending Lakeridge High School. She has aided the lab by creating a presentation detailing the setup and execution of a RIME dataset and is creating an easily digestible guide on the RIME process.