MEET THE TEAM

  • Kristen Wells - Principal Investigator

    Kristen graduated from the Genetics PhD program at Stanford University. For her PhD, she focused on applying cutting edge technologies to understand immune cell education and development. In her first project, she investigated the development of medullary thymic epithelial cells and their ability to express a large portion of the transcriptome using single cell RNA-sequencing combined with lineage tracing and transient ablation. In her second project, she studied B cell development in human germinal centers using paired single cell RNA-sequencing and single nucleus ATAC-sequencing. She now closely collaborates with other faculty at the Barbara Davis Diabetes center and focuses on bridging computational and biological insights, driving both project development and sequence analysis. Outside of the lab she enjoys hiking, skiing, cooking, and spending time with her family

  • Chris Hill - Bioinformatician

    Chris graduated from the University of Michigan with degrees in Computer Science and Biomolecular Science, and has an MS from the University of Pennsylvania in Computer and Information Science. He has been a member of the BDC Bioinformatics team since March 2024 and supports ongoing research initiatives in single-cell, bulk, and long-read RNAseq, ATACseq, and machine learning investigations. Outside of work, he enjoys hiking, reading, and watching movies.

Mentored Trainees

  • Jace Aloway - Postdoctoral Fellow

    Jace studied under Dr. Richard Behringer at MD Anderson Cancer Center where he got his Ph.D. in Genetics and Epigenetics in 2024, studying the role of Wt1 as a regulator of sex development in the mouse embryo. Jace joined Dr. Lori Sussel's lab in 2024, where he is focused on identifying the regulatory roles of RNA modifications and splicing events on murine pancreatic development and human stem cell differentiation. Outside of the lab, he enjoys spending time with his family and training for triathlons.

  • Autumn - Postdoctoral Fellow

    Autumn earned her PhD from the University of Colorado Anschutz, studying how lymph node stromal cells retention of vaccine-derived antigens benefited protective T cell immunity following an unrelated secondary infection. As a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Rachel Friedman’s lab, she is currently investigating the role of human islet myeloid cells and their influence on T cell responses during the progression of type 1 diabetes. Outside of work, she enjoys painting, traveling, trying new food, attending concerts, and petting other people’s dogs (with permission). 

  • Jessica - Graduate Student

    Jessica graduated from Fort Lewis College with a degree in Biology and a minor in Chemistry. She is an Immunology graduate student in Mia Smith's lab. Her work focuses on investigating the role of polyreactive B cells in type 1 diabetes using 10x scRNA-sequencing. When she is not in lab, Jessica enjoys gardening, cycling, and painting.

  • Brandon

  • Maria

    Description goes here

  • Riley - Postdog

    Riley choses to enjoy hiking, skiing, and eating instead of spending time in the lab.