Dr. Kammesheidt directs all R&D ventures for Ambry Genetics and has been active in research in the biological sciences for more than 20 years. Prior to joining Ambry in 2002, she worked as Senior Research Investigator at Purdue Pharma, where she conducted target identification and validation studies for neuropathic pain drug development. Dr. Kammesheidt is a trained molecular neurobiologist and has worked in diverse research areas focusing on Alzheimer's disease, neuromuscular dystrophies and viral gene therapy. She has published numerous scientific publications and is the author on several patents. Dr. Kammesheidt received her B.S. and Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of California, Irvine and did her post-doctoral research at the University of California, San Diego.
Scientists
Anja Kammesheidt, Ph.D.
Hansook Chong, Ph.D.
Dr. Chong joined Ambry Genetics in July 2010 as an R&D scientist. She graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a B.S. in Biochemistry and received her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of California, Irvine (UCI). As a recipient of the NIH Bioinformatics Training Grant and a student of the Institute of Genomics and Bioinformatics at UCI, Dr. Chong specialized in bioinformatics. Her research has focused on genome-wide analyses of nuclear receptor FXR and proteins regulating cholesterol and fatty acid synthesis. Dr. Chong has been active in molecular genetics research for more than six years and has published numerous scientific articles on the genetics of fatty acid and cholesterol regulation, as well as NextGen sequencing analysis methods.
Aaron Elliott, Ph.D.
Dr. Elliott received his undergraduate degree in Biology from Franklin and Marshall College and went on to do his Genetics Ph.D. training at Thomas Jefferson University and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His thesis involved studying the role of CREB-binding protein in germline and stem cell development. Dr. Elliott conducted his postdoctoral training in the cancer stem cell department at the Novartis Institute for Functional Genomics in San Diego, CA., where he studied potential drug targets for chemotherapeutic resistance and identified the first mitochondrial ABC transporter implicated in cancer drug resistance.
Wei Guo, Ph.D.
Dr. Guo leads high-quality bioinformatic data analysis and technical support for both our customers and internal R&D. He brings ten years of extensive experiences in bioinformatics to Ambry. Dr. Guo's expertise includes NextGen sequencing, DNA sequence analysis, genomics and development of custom bioinformatics software. Previously, Dr. Guo worked as the lead bioinformatics scientist at Viagen in Austin, Texas, where he developed gene expression microarrays and cattle breed identification tests using microsatellite genetic markers and provided genetic testing services to customers. He received his Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Iowa and conducted his post-doctoral research in bioinformatics studying corn genomics at Iowa State University.
Xiang Li, Ph.D.
Dr. Li received a B.S. in Microbiology from Nankai University, and a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from University of Illinois at Chicago. He did his post-doctoral training on biological network and Systems Biology in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He has more than 10 years of experience and numerous publications in the machine learning and AI. Dr. Li's Ph.D. work used computational biophysics and supervised (machine) learning algorithm to distinguish native protein structures from non-native structures. Recently, his research has focused on the classification of functional variants versus non-functional variants in personal genomes. Dr. Li led a bioinformatics team helping Ambry Genetics launch the Clinical Diagnostic Exome™ sequencing, which marked the first time the exome sequencing had been made available on a clinical basis. He is now leading the Bioinformatics Department of Ambry Genetics to develop ground-breaking bioinformatics infrastructure and pipelines, which are transforming the landscape of the clinical genetics industry in the post-genomic era.
Hong Lu, Ph.D.
Dr. Lu graduated from Nankai University, Tianjin, China with B.S. in Microbiology and received his M.S. in Statistics and Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from Iowa State University. As a bioinformatics scientist at Ambry, Dr. Lu specializes in analyzing next-generation sequencing data and designing and managing the database. His current research focuses on the pipeline generation for detecting potentially heritable disease-related DNA variants. Dr. Lu completed his training in the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI). Prior to Ambry, he served as a research assistant at PLEXdb.org and PlantGDB.org
Hsiao-Mei Lu, Ph.D.
Dr. Lu received a B.A. from National Chiao Tung University, and a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a bioinformatics scientist at Ambry Genetics with a focus on the research and development of Ambry’s bioinformatics pipeline for next generation sequencing for clinical diagnostics. Dr. Lu did her post-doctoral training in the Department of Mathematics and Center for Complex Biological Systems at the University of California, Irvine. She has worked in diverse research areas, including allosteric protein communication, protein folding and drug design and has more than 10 years of experience in developing algorithms for scientific computing with mathematical modeling, machine learning, data mining and parallel computing techniques.
Sharon Mexal, Ph.D.
Dr. Mexal is a research and development senior scientist at Ambry Genetics and has focused on the development of NextGen sequencing panels for clinical diagnostics. She graduated with honors from the University of New Mexico with a B.S. in Biology and with a Ph.D. from the Human Medical Genetics Program at the University of Colorado Medical Campus. Dr. Mexal completed her post-doctoral research at the University of Colorado at Boulder Institute for Behavioral Genetics. Prior to joining Ambry in 2009, she worked as a senior scientist at Cenomed Biosciences, a start-up pharmaceutical company, where she screened novel compounds for anti-psychotic and anti-emetic drug activity. Dr. Mexal has been active in medical genetics research for over a decade and has published numerous articles on the genetics of schizophrenia and tobacco addiction.