Dr. Heather Ballance works in the lab of Dr. Bokai Zhu. Her current projects include the 12-hour rhythms of RNA-binding proteins in nuclear speckles, endoplasmic reticulum (ER) protein content, and cell-to-cell communication through protein secretion. Dr. Ballance is supported by the T32 training program in the Division of Geriatrics, Department of Medicine.

Dr. Davidek works in the lab of Dr. Aditi Gurkar and is studying how DNA damage promotes cellular senescence in cardiac disease and aging. In a collaboration with Dr. Cohen-Karni at Carnegie Mellon University, she hopes to re-create a 3D cardiac unit and understand human cardiac aging. Dr. Davidek is currently supported by the T32 training program in the Division of Geriatrics, Department of Medicine.

Kritika Chaddha, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Aditi Gurkar. Her goal is to harness the power of organ-on-chip technology to deepen our understanding of cardiac aging, ultimately paving the way for innovative interventions and therapies to enhance heart health and quality of life.

Zhihao Sun, PhD, has been a trainee under the supervision of Shihui Liu, MD, PhD, since 2021. His research focuses on identifying and characterizing novel factors involved in inflammasome-mediated pyroptosis — a form of programmed cell death triggered by inflammation.

Takeshi Murai, PhD, is a trainee under the supervision of Stacey Sukoff Rizzo, PhD, and has worked in the Rizzo Lab since 2020. Prior to his work at the Aging Institute, Dr. Murai worked for more than 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry in Japan developing novel therapeutics to target the central nervous system.

Nandini Doshi has been a trainee under the supervision of Matthew Steinhauser, MD, since May 2022. Doshi is a medical student in the Pitt’s Physician Scientist Training Program (PSTP). In the Steinhauser Lab, her research concentrates on elucidating novel immune signatures of resiliency in aging populations, with a focus on individuals undergoing cardiac surgery.

Shohini Ghosh-Choudhary is a medical student in Pitt’s physician-scientist Medical Scientist Training Program, which combines medical and research training to equip students to both treat patients and undertake cutting-edge research. She joined Dr. Toren Finkel’s lab in 2020 as his first PhD student, and her work in the lab focuses on CRISPR-based screening to identify targets for senolytic therapies.

Lauren Bailey, PhD, is a postdoctoral scholar in the laboratory of Dr. Stacey Rizzo. She joined the Rizzo lab in 2023 as part of MARMO-AD, a consortium developing marmoset models of Alzheimer’s disease to identify early phenotypes and molecular mechanisms driving pathogenesis. Dr. Bailey’s research focuses on the transition from healthy aging to the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease and related neurodegeneration.

Travis Lear, PhD, was awarded a National Institutes of Health F31 Individual Fellowship and is currently supported by the T32 training program in the Vascular Medicine Institute, Department of Medicine. In the past few months, he has been actively working on repurposing FDA-approved drugs against SARS-CoV-2.

Dr. Anna Kalmykov is a postdoctoral fellow working under the supervision of Dr. Andrey Parkhitko. Her research focuses on using high-throughput approaches to investigate the mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of methionine restriction on aging and cancer, with particular emphasis on cancers driven by the loss of the RB1 tumor suppressor gene.