OUR TEAM
Guilherme Pedreira de Freitas Nader, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute
University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
B.S. Biology, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil (2006).
Masters, Cell Biology, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil (2007-2009).
PhD, Cell Biology, Columbia University, NY, USA (2010-2015).
Postdoctoral training, Cell Biology and Mechanobiology, Institute Curie (2016-2022).
About Dr. Nader
Guilherme Nader is originally from São Paulo-Brazil where he earned his Master degree in Cell Biology from the University of Sao Paulo. Afterwards, he moved to New York city where he earned his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Columbia University in the laboratory of Dr. Gregg Gundersen, where he studied the turnover and trafficking of adhesion receptors during cell migration. Subsequently Guilherme moved to Paris for his postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Matthieu Piel at Institut Curie where he studied the consequences of nuclear deformation and rupture to cell function and fate.
Jeneille Deans
Research Technician
Jeneille Deans was raised in Jamaican but returned to the United States for college. She received her B.S. in Biology with minors in Spanish and Peace and Justice from Villanova University. She worked as an undergraduate research assistant in Dr. Louise Russo’s Lab where she studied the effects of endocrine disruptors on fat and RNA production in liver tissue on ovariectomized rodents.
Diana Cruz Graduate Student
Diana Cruz is originally from Long Beach, CA. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with distinction in Biology and a minor in Law and Society in 2022. During her undergraduate education, she was a research assistant in the Beatty Lab where she studied serum amyloid A impacts on the immune system in a PDAC mice model. She is now a PhD student in the Cancer Biology subprogram of CAMB. Her current project investigates the nuclear integrity of thyroid cancer cells under confined stress in the Nader Lab is in collaboration with the Franco Lab.
Kayla Snare Graduate Student
Kayla Snare grew up in Apex, North Carolina, and she earned her B.S. in Biology with a minor in Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She spent three years conducting undergraduate research in Dr. Channing Der’s lab at UNC-CH where she focused on targeting the ERK mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade in KRAS-driven pancreatic cancer. Kayla is now a Cancer Biology PhD student within the Cell and Molecular Biology program, and she is interested in studying the mechanobiology of solid tumors and its implications for cell invasion, metastasis, and the development of new treatment strategies.
Akash Samuel (Sam) Graduate Student
Akash Samuel grew up in Chennai, India, and earned a bachelor's in Biotechnology from the SRM Institute of Science and Technology. He moved to Cambridge for his bachelor's thesis to work in the laboratories of Dr. Hae Lin Jang and Dr. Shiladitya Sengupta at Harvard Medical School-Brigham and Women's Hospital, where he learned to use diverse engineering tools (tissue engineering and drug delivery) to solve clinical problems. Sam is now a Ph.D. student at the Bioengineering Graduate Group, and his present research focuses on identifying nuclear mechanosensing events occurring at the tumor-stroma interface using 3D models.
