Meet Our Lab
Abby Green, Principal Investigator
Abby (she/her) is a pediatrician who dual-boarded in oncology and infectious diseases. She grew up in Iowa City and is an alumni of Tufts University (undergrad) and NYU (med school). She did her clinical training and post-doctoral fellowship at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and moved to Wash U in 2019 to start her lab. In addition to investigating DNA damage responses in pediatric cancer, she attends on the Immunocompromised Infectious Diseases service at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Outside of work, she hangs out with her kids, Max and Alana, and tries to exercise every so often.
Bo-Ruei Chen, Research Assistant Professor
Bo (he/him) grew up in Taiwan and came to the US for graduate school at Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, OH). He did his postdoctoral training initially at WashU and then at Weill Cornell Medine (New York, NY) before joining University of Alabama at Birmingham (Birmingham, AL) as a research assistant professor. In 2025, he rejoined WashU as a research assistant professor in the Green and Bednarski labs. He has broad interest in the mechanisms of genome integrity, especially the response and repair of DNA double strand breaks. In the Green lab, he investigates novel mechanisms that allow cancer cells coping with replicative stress and promote mutagenesis during tumor evolution. Outside the lab, he likes to hang out with his family, run, and watch football and baseball games.
Jess Devenport, Post-doctoral Fellow
Jess (she/her), originally from the Ozark foothills, is a first-year Cancer Biology DBBS student. She has spent the past few years as a Research Technician in the laboratory of Dr. John DiPersio where she primarily studied CAR-T cell therapy for T cell malignancies and the effects of IL-7 agonists on CAR-T cell trafficking and proliferation. When she isn’t in the lab you will likely find her snuggled up with her dogs watching something spooky on Netflix while thinking up DIY projects for her husband to do.
Rachel DeWeerd, PhD Candidate
Rachel (she/her), a native of Springfield, MO, graduated from Drury University in 2019 with a B.S. in Biochemistry. Fresh from her undergraduate studies, she joined the Green Lab as its first technician, helping set the foundations of the lab. In 2022, Rachel rejoined the Green Lab as a graduate student in the Cancer Biology program here at Wash U where she will study the functional impact of APOBEC activity. Outside of the lab, Rachel spends her time baking, practicing yoga, and cheering for the St. Louis Blues.
Dylan Fingerman, PhD Candidate
Dylan (he/him) grew up just outside Philadelphia, and attended Rutgers University for undergrad. He worked for several years studying Melanoma in Dr. Meenhard Herlyn’s lab at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. Dylan spends most of his time adding various anti-cancer drugs to cancer cells and is interested in interrogating the correlation between APOBEC mutational signatures with treatment resistance to several classes of drugs. He hopes to show APOBEC proteins contribute to tumor resistance to drug therapies through increased phenotype diversity in the tumors. When not in lab, Dylan can be found somewhere in Forest Park playing fetch with his dog Sabrina.
Danielle LaVigne, PhD Candidate
Danielle (she/her) is from Simpsonville, SC and graduated from Clemson University with a B.S in Genetics. During her time at Clemson, she was involved in two research labs. One focused on encapsulating CRISPR-Cas9 inside polymer-based nanoparticles, while the other focused on characterizing inhibitors of an enolase protein involved in the glycolytic pathway of Trypanosomes. Now, with the interest in studying the regulation of the APOBEC proteins, Danielle joins the Green Lab as the first graduate student in the Molecular Genetics and Genomics program. Outside of the lab, Danielle enjoys playing the ukulele and practicing her American Sign Language skills.
Mitch Valentine, MSTP Student
Mitch (he/him) grew up in the Chicago area and graduated from Case Western Reserve University in 2023 with degrees in Biochemistry and Psychology. During his time in Cleveland, he spent several years studying breast cancer genomic instability and therapeutic vulnerabilities in Dr. Ruth Keri’s Lab at the Cleveland Clinic. Now, Mitch is joining the Green Lab as an MSTP student in the Cancer Biology Program. Beyond the lab bench, Mitch can be found playing volleyball, running through Forest Park, or perfecting his pickleball serve with Dylan.
Bryn Bahnks, Research Assistant II
Bryn (she/her) is from Bettendorf, IA and recently graduated from WashU with a B.A. in Biology. During her time as an undergraduate, she worked in Dr. Jason Weber’s lab studying mutated p53 endometrial cancer. She now joins the Green Lab as a research technician, where she hopes to gain further exposure to cancer biology and DNA damage response pathways. Outside of the lab, Bryn enjoys running and going on coffee walks.
Prasanth Thuthika, Research Assistant
Prasanth (he/him) is from the southern part of India and earned his master's degree in Bioinformatics from Indiana University Indianapolis in May 2025. His research interests lie at the intersection of deep learning and biology. During his master's, under Alexander Krohannon, Ph.D., he studied Generative Adversarial Networks for Biology, as well as computational methods for RNA modifications. Prasanth joined the Green Lab to study APOBEC mutational signatures and APOBEC3 expression from matched exome and transcriptomic datasets in patient samples while expanding his understanding of cancer biology. He is also a member of the Khabele Lab, where he develops algorithms for analyzing cellular markers in tumor slides and supports the lab's bioinformatics analyses. Outside the lab, Prasanth watches movies (and daydreams about making one in the future).
Alumni
Jessica Raj, Summer Student: June 2025 - August 2025
Ilham Matiker, Summer Student: May 2025 - August 2025
Ryan Chan, Graduate Student (DB): Rotation - May 2025 - August 2025
Lojain Elkhidir, Undergraduate Student: August 2022 - May 2025
Mitch Valentine, Graduate Student (MSTP): Rotation - July 2024 - August 2024
Ava Hansen, Undergraduate/ Research Assistant/ Visiting Medical Student: Seq - July 2023
David O’Leary, Research Assistant: June 2020 - June 2023
Sofia Smith, Graduate Student (MGG): Rotation - September 2020 - January 2021
Natasha Ramakrishnan, Graduate Student (MGG): Rotation - June 2021 - August 2021
Lewis Wang, Undergraduate Student: August 2020 - August 2021
Rachel DeWeerd, Research Technician: August 2019 - August 2021
Ladan Abbasi, Graduate Student (MGG): Rotation - September 2021 - November 2021
Haley Hashemi, Graduate Student (CB): Rotation - November 2021 - January 2022
Aishwarya Krishnan, Graduate Student (CB) Rotation - January 2022 - March 2022
Faiz Ahmed, Post-doctoral fellow, October 2020 - March 2022
Le’Mark Russel, Graduate Student (CB) Rotation - November 2022 - January 2023
Naser Salas-Husain, Graduate Student -
Thi Tran, Bioinformatics Research Analyst - September 2022 - July 2026
Brooke Harris, Research Assistant - May 2023 - August 2026