Archana Yadav, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow

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Kishore Madamanchi, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr.Kishore Madamanchi earned his Ph.D. in Neuroscience, specializing in Epilepsy and Neurodegeneration, from the Department of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics at the University of Hyderabad, India. Throughout his doctoral studies, his research primarily delved into understanding the implications of Dopamine and Glutamate-induced excitotoxicity, histone methylation, and their effects on phase II detoxifying enzymes, antioxidant mechanisms, as well as the significance of unfolded protein (UFP) aggregates in epilepsy, and their correlation with seizure recurrence particularly in cases of Focal cortical dysplasia and hippocampal sclerosis, During this period, he successfully developed an epilepsy rat model with reduced mortality rates, facilitating investigations into the influence of dopamine regulation on seizure severity. Currently, Dr. Kishore has joined Malkani’s lab, where he focuses on exploring the impact of Alzheimer’s disease pathology on the Gut microbiome, disease severity, and neuroinflammation. He employs the Drosophila melanogaster (Fruit fly) model for this research, examining circadian rhythm disruption’s effects in neuropathology models.

Contact: kmadaman@uabmc.edu

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Sachin Budhathoki, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. Budhathoki graduated with his Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2024. His doctoral research focused on building cardiac tissue chips for disease modeling, particularly creating a physiologically relevant model that mimics in vivo structural remodeling and functional adaptation seen in heart development, normal function, and disease. Currently, as a postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Budhathoki is involved in two projects. The first project investigates Lipid Storage Myopathy, a rare lipid metabolism disorder causing abnormal fat storage in skeletal and cardiac muscles. He is studying the phenotype of this disease in Crispr-Cas9 mutant fly lines and exploring whether behavioral and dietary interventions improve the disease phenotype. The second project examines the impact of a protein-restricted diet on health, lifespan and aging using obesity models of flies.
Contact: sachinme@uab.edu

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Morgan Barkley, MS, GBS, Graduate Student

Morgan Barkley earned her bachelor’s degree from Clark Atlanta University. Her project focuses on unraveling the genetic connections between cognitive dysfunction, insomnia, and cardiovascular disease (CVD). She is manipulating Drosophila orthologs of causal human cognitive function, insomnia, and CVD genes to outline biological pathways linking cognitive dysfunction to both diseases.
Contact: motb@uab.edu

Sajal Kumar Halder, MS, GBS, Graduate Student

Sajal Kumar Halder earned his master’s from Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh. Sajal’s project focuses on identifying the genetic links between obesity and associated disorders like cardiovascular disease (CVD) and dementia using Drosophila melanogaster models. He is exploring how time-restricted feeding affects genes implicated in obesity to potentially alleviate symptoms related to CVD and dementia. The project integrates genetic knockdowns and dietary interventions to uncover metabolic and circadian mechanisms that might mitigate these diseases, aiming to offer new therapeutic insights.

Contact: shalder@uab.edu

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Elizabeth S. Pasam, GMS, Researcher III

Elizabeth Sthuthi obtained her master’s in Biotechnology from UAB. She leverages her expertise in investing lipid metabolism, carbon cycles and its role in inter organ communication in drosophila.
Contact: epasam@uab.edu

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John Watson, BS Biomedical Sciences, Researcher III

As a Researcher III, John provides fluorescence microscopy imaging and analysis for lab wide projects. His work offers us visual data in areas of investigation such as, lipid metabolism, neurodegeneration, muscle dysfunction, and the microbiome. In addition to imaging, John is also familiar with other useful assays for our lab such as sleep/activity studies, memory impairment assessments, and flight indexing.
Contact: jowatson@uabmc.edu

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Fatma Oduk, Researcher II

Fatma’s duties include coordinating lab duties on a daily and long-term basis. These lab coordinating duties include maintaining lab stocks, genetic crosses, ordering lab reagents, and complacence with lab safety. Fatma also helps with vital lab research projects, in association with PI and lab personnel.
Contact: foduk@uabmc.edu

Yash Melkani, Engineering Undergraduate at UC Berkeley & Researcher at the UAB

Yash is a Researcher I in the lab. He is developing software for performing automated analysis of high-speed Drosophila cardiac recordings. His research focuses on machine learning and computer vision techniques.
Contact: ymelkani@uab.edu

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Dave Melkani, Undergraduate at Emory & Researcher at the UAB

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Dev Patel, Researcher II

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Srinath R. Gurrala, Student Assistant & MS

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Carson Lambert, Undergraduate

Carson is working under Morgan Barkley, and his work currently consists of helping Morgan with her research on genetic connections between cognitive dysfunction, insomnia, and cardiovascular disease (CVD)

Contact: crlamber@uab.edu

Veeresh Kondapaneni, Volunteer & MS

Contact: kondapav@uab.edu

Lauren Ngo, Undergraduate

Contact: lngo@uab.edu

Dori Do, Undergraduate

Contact: dods@uab.edu

Abigail Bonds, Undergraduate

Contact: agbonds@uab.edu

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Shipping Information

Fatma Oduk
Biomedical Research Building 2 (BMR2-442)
UAB Heetsink School of Medicine
901 19^th Street South, Birmingham, AL 35294
Lab Phone: 205-996-1784

Lab Alumni