People

Winston Timp is an associate professor in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. He earned bachelor degrees in Biochemistry, Chemistry, Physics and Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana. He then earned his masters and PhD in Electrical Engineering from MIT, working at the Whitehead Institute in Paul Matsudaira’s lab, focusing his thesis work on the study of cellular communication in a 3D microenvironment. After receiving his doctorate, he trained as a postdoc at Johns Hopkins in the labs of Andrew Feinberg and Andre Levchenko, studying the epigenetics of cancer.
✉ Email: wtimp@jhu.edu

Carolina is an assistant research scientist in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. During her MD/PhD training, she studied genome-wide DNA methylation across different tissues of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. After completing a Pediatrics residency at Boston Children’s Hospital and Clinical Genetics and Genomics residency training at NHGRI, she enrolled in the Laboratory Genetics and Genomics Fellowship at NHGRI to develop expertise in clinical cytogenetic and molecular genetic analyses. Her long-term goal is to understand the role of DNA methylation and chromatin alterations in disease to expedite diagnosis and to bring those insights back to clinical care. She likes drawing, eating out, dancing, reading, and sleeping (as a working mom, she wishes siesta pods were more widely available).

Julian Rocha is an Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. He earned his PhD in Chemistry at the University of Virginia studying the dynamic behavior of a bacterial secretion system utilizing live-cell super-resolution imaging. After graduate school he joined a local Baltimore start-up, Circulomics, to design and construct an instrument for single-molecule DNA sizing. Following acquisition of Circulomics by PacBio, he switched gears to focus on sample-prep applications for long-read DNA sequencing. Outside of lab Julian enjoys playing soccer, playing fetch with his dog, and chasing his kids around.

Jess Hosea is a research technician in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience & Behavior from the University of New Hampshire (UNH). While at UNH, she completed her senior honors thesis on effective connectivity in the brain during cognitive flexibility in the Brain Sciences and Cognition Lab. During her time in the Timp Lab, she hopes to expand her wet lab skills and learn computational methods while working on various projects. Outside of lab, she enjoys cooking, napping, and petting every dog that she sees.

Paul Hook is a postdoctoral fellow in Department of Biomedical Engineering. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Pennsylvania State University. He earned his PhD in Human Genetics in Andrew McCallion’s lab at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where his thesis work focused on pinpointing the genes and variants underlying genome-wide association signals by using genomic data from disease-relevant cell populations. Outside of science, Paul enjoys exploring Baltimore, getting way too into college football, cooking, and playing disc golf.
✉ Email: phook2@jhmi.edu

Courtney Johnson is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Dermatology who completed her bachelor’s degree in Chemistry at Tougaloo College. She earned a medical degree and a doctorate in Pathobiology from the Warren Alpert School of Medicine of Brown University. Her doctoral thesis work was conducted in Jonathan Reichner’s lab and focused on elucidating integrin receptor crosstalk in the human neutrophil response to fungi. She recently completed a dermatology residency at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She is interested in utilizing sequencing methods to understand Cutaneous T-cell lymphomas and the tumor microenvironment. Courtney enjoys working out, hiking, playing the piano, and spending time with family and friends in her free time.
✉ Email: cjohn263@jhmi.edu

Courtney Hall is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. She earned her MS and PhD in Genetics at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth where she developed methods for forensic STR profiling using the MinION device. In addition to forensic applications of ONT sequencing, her research focused on the detection of disease-relevant alterations in the DNA and microRNA contained within extracellular vesicles. Courtney spends most of her free time missing her dog who still lives in Texas and planning their life after she wins the lotto.
✉ Email: chall106@jh.edu

Sheridan is a 5th year PhD student co-mentored by Drs. Winston Timp and Richard Huganir. She is developing a single-cell long read dataset of the mouse hippocampus in order to uncover the transcript-isoform landscape of neuronal activity in different brain cell types following learning. Her hobbies include foraging, cooking, jewelry making, horseback riding, backpacking and camping.

Luke Morina is a first year PhD student in the department of Biomedical Engineering (BME). He earned his undergraduate degree in BME from Johns Hopkins University. His work focuses on developing computational techniques to improve and support novel sequencing technologies. Outside of lab, he loves to cook, dig for top quality memes on social media, and practice using the Force.

Hope Eden is a third year PhD student in the Cellular and Molecular Medicine program and an NSF graduate research fellow. Her work focuses on utilizing long-read RNA sequencing for spatial transcriptomic characterization of the human dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, differential transcript isoform detection across geographically diverse populations, and investigation of genetic contributions to translation efficiency. When she’s not in the lab you can find her wandering a museum, admiring a plant, or daydreaming on the dance floor.

Jamie Moore is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Biomedical Engineering (BME) department. She earned her B.S. in Biomolecular Engineering and Bioinformatics from the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC). While at UCSC, Jamie focused on enabling copy number variant (CNV) testing on the PromethION and other nanopore sequencers by increasing the high-sequence throughput and developing a faster protocol in Dr. Christopher Vollmers’s Lab. Outside the lab, Jamie enjoys baking, maintaining and growing her plant collection, hiking, and taking spontaneous adventures.

Qingqing Gong is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Biochemistry, Cellular, and Molecular Biology program. She earned her B.S. in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where she also minored in Computer Science and Visual Arts Studio. While at UCSD, she worked on validating the potential effects of the repeat length of short tandem repeats on gene expression, completing her senior honors thesis on this topic. Joining the Timp Lab, she hopes to gain experience in wet lab and expand her computational skill set while working on projects related to RNA accessibility. When not in the lab, she spends most of her time catching up on sleep, listening to music (with Taylor Swift being her favorite artist of all time), gaming, and reading (occasionally writing) fan fiction.