Associate Director
Sharon Samuel, M.S.
Sharon is the Associate Director/Operational Manager for the SAIF and Sorace Lab. She can answer most questions related to technical aspects of imaging, experimental design, IACUC protocols, regulatory details, and training. She received her Master’s degree in Health Physics in 2020 from UAB, and has over 20 years of lab experience. In her spare time she enjoys watching movies and completing home improvement projects. She intends to discover the mystery of dreams in a few years.
Post-Doctoral
Noon Eltoum, MD, MPH
Noon Eltoum attained her medical degree from the University of Medical Sciences and Technology in Khartoum, Sudan. She completed a Master of Public Health with a concentration in Epidemiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2022. With the support of UAB’s T32 Health Services Research program, she is a now a second-year postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Radiology at UAB aspiring to become a physician scientist. Her current research interests include breast cancer and imaging, innovative radiological techniques and their impact on patient outcomes, and global healthcare access and quality improvement. Outside of her career, Noon enjoys painting, flipping furniture, playing basketball and volleyball, and spending time with friends and family.
Graduate Students
Patrick Song
Patrick completed his BS in Cellular and Molecular Biology at The University of Texas at Austin in 2019. From 2019-2021, he worked a Researcher II before joining the lab as a Cancer Biology doctoral student and AMC21 scholar in 2021. His research interests involve using noninvasive imaging techniques to inform on and guide therapies that affect DNA damage pathways (radiotherapy, PARP inhibitors, etc). He has published on hypoxia imaging techniques to guide immunotherapy and combination trastuzumab-external beam radiation. In his free time, he likes to collect plants and play board games.
Shannon Lynch
Shannon completed her AS in Biological Sciences from Enterprise State Community College in 2017 and her BS in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2019. Her undergraduate research investigated the role of estrogen in macrophage polarization in the context of cardiovascular disease. In addition to basic research, she gained experience in education research which focused on characterizing undergraduate research and understanding teamwork in team-based learning settings. She is currently a second-year graduate student pursuing her PhD in Biomedical Sciences through the Cell, Molecular, and Developmental Biology (CMDB) theme of GBS at UAB. Joining the lab in 2021, her current studies focus on investigating novel combination therapeutics in preclinical models of triple negative breast cancer with an emphasis on changes to tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and tumor vascularity. Her research interests include women’s health, lymphocyte activation and infiltration, and identifying novel biomarkers or therapeutic response. In her free time, she likes to read, play board/card games, and hike.
Ameer Mansur
Ameer completed his BS in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2020. He joined the lab as an undergraduate researcher in 2019. His research is focused on developing quantitative imaging metrics to assess targeted treatment response in breast cancer. His recent work includes evaluating cellular proliferation as a biomarker of targeted treatment response in in preclinical models of HER2+ breast cancer. He has developed numerous algorithms and workflows for medical image processing. His hobbies include digital art, coding, photography, and video editing as well as traveling and spending time with his friends and family.
Carlos Gallegos
Carlos is a Biomedical Engineering Graduate Student. He joined the lab as a biomedical engineering doctoral student. His research focuses on the use of quantitative imaging modalities for the assessment of immunotherapy response in gliomas, with an interest on computational analysis and image processing. During his free time, he enjoys building metal model kits and spending time with his family and friends.
Ugur Acka
Ugur Acka is a Biomedical Engineering Graduate Student from Turkey. He is on track to graduate with a Masters Degree in BME and to pursue his Ph.D. His interests are Amino acid PET tracers for cancer imaging in Nuclear Medicine. His hobbies are aircraft and percussion instruments. His life motto is: If it was easy everyone would do it.
Undergraduate Students
Corinne Crawford
Corinne is currently a junior studying biomedical engineering at UAB. She joined the lab during her sophomore year in 2022. Her interests in research include biomarker analysis, nuclear imaging, and breast cancer cell line characterization. Her current research includes analyzing somatostatin receptor subtype 2 expression in breast cancer cell lines to provide a biomarker target for molecular therapy. In her free time, she enjoys reading, painting, and spending time with her family and friends.
Researchers
Chloe Demellier
Chloe joined the Sorace Lab as a researcher in 2023. Her current research focuses on developing and characterizing a radioresistant breast cancer cell line along with investigating treatments for re-sensitization. Her research interests include targeted drug delivery for cancer treatment, tissue engineering, and microphysiological systems. In her free time, she enjoys reading, watching movies, and spending time with friends and family.
Program Manager
Jordyn Wheeler
Jordyn Wheeler is the Program Manager for the Sorace Lab. She coordinates schedules within the lab, facilitates grant planning, plans lab activities and processes all ordering and billing. She enjoys attending UAB sporting events, spending time with her family and volunteering with her church.
