People
People
The lab.
Our group is a mix of postdocs, graduate students, physician-scientists, and staff drawn from across the world. We care about scientific passion, intellectual honesty, and looking out for each other.
Postdoctoral Fellows
King Faisal Yambire, PhD
Postdoctoral Associate
King grew up in Ghana, earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Ghana, and completed his PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Göttingen, where he studied lysosome–mitochondria signaling. He joined the lab in 2020.
Currently studying the role of mitochondria in immune regulation and cancer.
Maria del Mar Rigual Abolafio, PhD
Postdoctoral Associate
Mar is from Spain and received her undergraduate degree from the University of Sevilla. She completed her PhD with Nabil Djouder at the Spanish National Research Center (CNIO), focusing on mechanisms of liver regeneration. She joined the lab in 2026.
Currently investigating the biological processes that drive liver metastasis and identifying potential therapeutic targets.
Ross Webber, MD PhD
Physician-Scientist · Holman Track
Ross is from Westchester, NY. He earned his BA from Penn, his PhD with Kivanc Birsoy at Rockefeller (compartmentalized organellar metabolism), and his MD at Weill Cornell. He is training in radiation oncology at MSKCC and conducting research in the lab through the Holman Physician Scientist Track.
Currently exploring how ApoE modulates cellular function in health and disease.
Mai Takahashi, MD MPH
Postdoctoral Associate
Mai grew up in Chiba, Japan and attended medical school there. She earned her MPH at Harvard School of Public Health and completed internal medicine training at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, with prior clinical research in head and neck cancer. She joined the lab in 2022.
Currently studying cancer metastasis mechanisms and exploring therapeutic targets.
Qiushuang (Q) Wu, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Q grew up in China and received her undergraduate degree from Wuhan University. She completed her PhD with Ariel Bazzini at the Stowers Institute studying ribosome-mediated regulation of mRNA decay and translation. She joined the lab in 2022.
Currently applying post-transcriptional regulation approaches to cancer biology.
Neil Neumann, MD PhD
Postdoctoral Associate
Neil grew up in Des Moines, Iowa. He earned his BA in Biophysics at Johns Hopkins, then his MD/PhD at JHU School of Medicine with Andrew Ewald, using 3D organoid imaging and mechanical modeling to study breast ductal organogenesis and metastasis.
Currently studying how heat shock pathway deregulation impacts melanoma metastasis.
Jess Posada, MD
Postdoctoral Associate
Jess is from San Francisco. She earned her BS/MS in Cell and Molecular Biology, completed Anatomic Pathology residency at Brigham and Women’s / Harvard, and first joined the lab as a medical student where she established a melanoma therapeutic target (LXRb–ApoE). She rejoined as a postdoc in 2023.
Currently studying mechanisms by which ApoE regulates cancer progression.
Behnam Ebrahimi, PhD
Postdoctoral Associate
Behnam earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees at the University of Kerman, Iran, then completed his PhD at UT Health San Antonio investigating LIF inhibition and ferroptosis in ovarian cancer. He joined the lab in 2025.
Currently studying the metabolic vulnerabilities of colorectal liver metastases.
Graduate Students
Alon Millet
Graduate Student · Tri-I Computational Biology
Alon was born in Israel and grew up in New Jersey. He completed a joint BS/MS in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale in 2020 and joined the lab in 2021 through the Tri-Institutional Program in Computational Biology and Medicine.
Currently leveraging wet and dry lab approaches to study tumor systems immunology.
Ethan Seltzer
Graduate Student
Ethan is from New Jersey and earned his BS in Biological Sciences at Cornell, where he studied membrane fusion in Tetrahymena. After post-bac work at Hospital for Special Surgery on photosensitivity in lupus, he joined the lab in 2023.
Currently investigating the role of innervation in cancer metastasis.
Francesca Di Cristofano
Graduate Student
Francesca is from Pelham, NY and grew up around her father’s lab. She earned her ScB in Neurobiology at Brown in 2023 and joined the lab to work at the intersection of neuroscience and cancer biology.
Currently studying how tumor–nerve interactions promote cancer metastasis.
Nitay Ad-El
Graduate Student
Nitay grew up near Jerusalem and later moved to Tel Aviv. After several years as a paramedic, he completed his BSc in Biology at Tel Aviv University and worked with Dan Peer on mRNA delivery systems. He joined the lab in 2024.
Currently studying interactions between metastatic cancers and the central nervous system.
Staff
Sohail Tavazoie, MD PhD
Head of Laboratory
Sohail is the Leon Hess Professor and Head of the Meyer Laboratory of Systems Cancer Biology at The Rockefeller University, and director of the NCI Rockefeller University MetNet Center. He received his undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley and his MD and PhD from Harvard Medical School. He completed internship and residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, postdoctoral training at Harvard, and oncology fellowship at MSKCC. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and a past president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.
Nandan Mandayan
Laboratory Manager
Nandan has prior research experience in oncogenesis and stem cell biology. He manages the lab and supports members on molecular and animal studies.
Emilie Wang, PhD MBA
Grants Administrator
Emilie completed her PhD at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and her MBA at NYU Stern. Before joining the lab she worked for a cancer-care tech startup and previously for Médecins Sans Frontières.
Michelle Wilson
Administrative Assistant
Michelle is an English major with a background in cultural studies, born in Costa Rica and raised in Texas. She specializes in organization with the goal of simplifying the lives of others.