Lab members

Gaurav Moghe (PI)

Gaurav is broadly interested in understanding how things turn out the way they do. He is fascinated by the diversity of life and hopes that we will be careful about the way we manage it.

Gaurav was born in Mumbai, India not so (or maybe) long ago. He learnt his trade by obtaining a Masters degree in Biochemistry from India, followed by a PhD from Michigan State University in Genetics and Quantitative Biology. During his PhD, Gaurav did a lot of computational biology research but switched to doing a significant amount of bench-work during his postdoc.

In his spare time, Gaurav likes to read, write, watch TV and explore the outdoors, but not all at the same time. His favorite number is 42. His favorite TV series are Star Trek TNG (not the old Star Trek please), The Expanse, Game of Thrones, Rick and Morty, Family Guy and others.

Download CV (updated June 2026)

People who actually do the work

Regular cast

Mohammad Irfan Mohammad Irfan (Research Associate, 2021-present)	Xinyu Yuan Postdoc (2023-)	Bhaswati Sarmah Bhaswati Sarmah (PhD student, 2023-)
Nate Smith Nate Smith (PhD Student, 2024-); USDA AI Fellowship	María Teresa Alvarado Parra (Tere-Parra) PhD student (2024 - ), Plant Breeding and Genetics, Fulbright Fellow	Thomas Hawkins Lab tech (Fall 2026-); LLM-based literature extraction
Chesney Melissinos Undergrad/Senior (Spring 2024 - current); LLM-based genomic analyses, mycosporine-like amino acid pathway elucidation	Daniel Levy Undergrad/Senior (Fall 2025 - ); tomato engineering project	Carol Zhang Undergrad/Senior, Spring 2026 - current. Statistical modeling of molecular evolutionary patterns
Eli Furgeson Undergrad/Senior, Stats and Data Science (Fall 2026)	Emma Clark Undergrad/Freshman (Fall 2026); algal engineering project	Caroline Lee Undergrad (Fall 2026-); Sweet potato project

Lab alumni

Graduate researchers (lab techs, postdocs, grad students)

Alexandra Bennett Lab Tech/Manager (2017-2020). Currently Senior Scientist, Analytical Chemistry, University of Vienna	Lars Kruse DFG Postdoctoral Fellow (2017-2021). Assistant Professor, Concordia University	Kai Fan CSC Postdoctoral Fellow, 2019-2020. Currently, Professor, Fujian University
Liz Mahood Grad student (2018-2023). USDA Predoctoral Fellow. Currently Postdoc, UPenn	Kanza Arshad Masters student, 2022-2023. Fulbright Fellow. Currently PhD candidate, University of Michigan	Angela Prada-Baez Masters student (2025-2026). Currently, Associate Scientist, Ohalo Genetics
Alen Zimic Lab tech (2025-2026). Currently, PhD student Computational Biology	Szu-Ping Chen SIPS Grand Challenge Fellow. Currently: PhD student, Buckler lab

Undergraduate researchers

Wilman Vlach Summer 2026	Sahaj Satani Fall 2025, Spring 2026	Crystal Grissom Spring 2024-Spring 2025
Leena Jalees Fall 2024	Garret Bouvier 2024 Spring/Fall	Archawin Fall 2024
Ariana Patel	Ling Hua	Mac Flanagan Fall 2021-Spring 2023. Currently, PhD Student at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology
Taelor Matos Fall/Spring 2023. Currently, PhD student, Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine	Jacob Novozhenets	Arden Lee 2023; Bioinformatics PhD student, Boston University
Jiho Lee Jiho Lee (undergrad)	Sonia Lulla Sonia Lulla	Nandita Nagarajan 2018. Currently at Varda Engineering
Se Jin Park PhD Pharmacology from USC, currently at Vertex Pharma	Chenab Khakh Undergraduate researcher (2017-2019). Currently, Internal Medicine Resident Physician