Members
Meet the Burridge lab team members. We welcome requests for information about our work and collaboration opportunities.
Principal Investigator
Paul Burridge, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Center for Pharmacogenomics
Dr. Burridge is an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a founding faculty member of the Center for Pharmacogenomics. Dr. Burridge began his career in genomics and bioinformatics at the Sanger Institute working on the human and mouse genome projects. He completed a PhD in Human Stem Cell Biology at the University of Nottingham before pursuing postdoctoral fellowships at Johns Hopkins University in Pediatric Oncology and then at Stanford University in Cardiology before becoming an Instructor in Cardiovascular Medicine at Stanford. For nearly two decades, Dr. Burridge has worked on the applications of human pluripotent stem cells (both hESC and hiPSC), concentrating on culture and differentiation methodologies, regenerative medicine, and disease modeling, specifically the pharmacogenomic and molecular mechanisms of chemotherapy-induced cardiomyopathy and heart failure. Dr. Burridge is the recipient of the NIH NHLBI Pathway to Independence Award and is a Fellow of the American Heart Association in Genomic and Precision Medicine.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Malorie Blancard, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Malorie earned her PhD in Human Genetics from Sorbonne University in Paris in 2018. There, she focused on the identification of new variants causing cardiac arrhythmias with a risk of sudden death by using exome sequencing analysis and functional studies on calcium channels. She is interested to pursue her career on rare cardiac arrhythmias using other relevant technologies such as genome sequencing and hiPSC. She started her first postdoctoral research in Burridge Lab in February of 2019 and works on hiPSC models of sudden cardiac death.
Romina Cejas, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Romina earned her PhD in Biochemical Sciences from the National University of Cordoba in Argentina. During her doctoral training, she studied nuclear protein glycosylation in human cells. In 2018 she joined Dr. Javier Blanco's lab at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at SUNY Buffalo and started her postdoctoral research focused on the characterization of genetic and epigenetic factors that contribute to variable drug response and disposition in relevant clinical settings. She joined Burridge lab at Northwestern University in May 2022 and works on the identification of genetic determinants of doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity in patient-specific hiPSC cardiomyocytes.
Hananeh Fonoudi, PhD
Research Assistant Professor
Hananeh earned her PhD in Stem Cells and Developmental Biology from the St. Vincent’s Clinical School of Medicine at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. During her PhD work she studied the genetics of hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) using human induced pluripotent stem cells under supervision of Dr. Richard Harvey at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute. She joined Burridge lab at Northwestern University in February 2019 and works on human cardiac organoids and modeling pediatric congenital heart disease. Hananeh is funded by an AHA Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Davi Lyra-Leite, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Davi earned his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Southern California in 2019 under the supervision of Dr. Megan McCain. During his doctoral training, he studied the role of matrix rigidity, matrix protein composition and tissue architecture on the regulation of mitochondrial function and structure in cardiomyocytes. He joined the Burridge lab in November 2019 and is interested in the role of metabolism in cardiac development and pathophysiology. Davi is funded by an AHA Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.
Praeploy Pongpamorn, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Praeploy earned her PhD in Regenerative Sciences from Hannover Medical School, Germany, in 2022 under the supervision of Dr. Ruth Olmer. During her doctoral training, she studied the contributions of vascular cell types to the onset of the rare genetic disease Loeys-Dietz Syndrome using patient-derived iPSCs. She joined the Burridge lab in October 2022 and is interested in skeletal muscle and adipose differentiation from pluripotent cells for cultivated meat.
Disheet Shah, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Disheet earned his PhD in Cardiac disease modeling using human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) technology from the University of Tampere, Finland in 2020 under the supervision of Prof. Katriina Aalto-Setälä. During his doctoral training, he modeled genetic cardiac diseases- LQT2- and LMNA-related dilated cardiomyopathy, using the hiPSC technology. He studied the disease phenotype in vitro at basal conditions, under stress and stimulation with drugs and hypoxia. He joined the Burridge lab in March 2021 and is interested in cardiotoxicity due to doxorubicin and the differential manifestation of cardiotoxicity in different population groups.
Research Technologists
Evelyn Cheng, MS
Research Technologist II
Evelyn earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Biology in University of Toronto, and continued to pursue a Master’s of Biotechnology Degree at Northwestern University. She joined our lab in 2022 as part of her master’s degree requirement. Upon graduation, she stayed as a technician to help with general laboratory matters. Her project is to optimize conditions for culturing human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) in 3D environment as well as differentiating them into cardiomyocytes. She is also working on making recombinant proteins for the lab.
Benjamin Norton, MS
Research Technologist III
Ben is a research technologist at Northwestern University, where he is conducting extensive direct reprogramming to generate iPSC lines for disease modeling studies. He received his BS in Biology from Wheaton College (IL) and MS in Biotechnology (Cellular and Molecular Medicine) from Johns Hopkins University. Before joining the Burridge lab, he investigated iPSC-mediated neuronal regeneration strategies to treat dystrophinopathies, sensorineural hearing loss and vestibular dysfunction.
Graduate Students
K. Ashley Fetterman, BA
PhD Student (DGP)
Ashley is a PhD student in the Driskill Graduate Program (DGP) at Northwestern. She received her BA in Biological Sciences from Mount Holyoke College. Before joining the Burridge lab, she worked in drug discovery and clinical research. She is focusing on calmodulinopathies, chemotherapy-induced arrhythmias, cardiomyocyte subtype specification and maturation in the Burridge lab. Ashley is funded by an NIH NHLBI F31 Predoctoral Fellowship.
Emily Pinheiro, BA
MD/PhD Student (MSTP)
Emily is an MD/PhD student in the Medical Scientist Training Program and Driskill Graduate Program (DGP) at Northwestern University. She received her BA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before joining the Burridge lab, she worked in clinical research with a focus on pharmacotherapy for pregnant women. Her research focuses on pluripotent stem cell modeling of vascular disease. Emily is funded by an NIH NHLBI F31 Predoctoral Fellowship.
Marisol Romero Tejeda, AB
PhD Student (DGP)
Marisol is a PhD student in the Driskill Graduate Program (DGP) at Northwestern University. She received her AB in Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology from Harvard University. Before joining the Burridge lab, she worked as a technician at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard. She currently works on direct reprogramming. Marisol is funded by the National Cancer Institute.
Carly Weddle, BS
PhD Student (DGP)
Carly is a PhD student in the Driskill Graduate Program (DGP) at Northwestern, where she is studying hiPSC models of breast cancer. She received her BS in Biochemistry from Elon University while conducting research in analytical chemistry. Carly is funded by an NIH NCI F31 Predoctoral Fellowship.
Research Staff
Conrad Epting, MD
Attending Physician, Critical Care and Cardiology, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Pathology
Strategies to promote cell and tissue regeneration remain at the forefront of cardiovascular biology. I have a scientific background in myogenic stem cells and skeletal muscle regeneration. At Northwestern University, I spent some years studying myocardial targeting by pathogens, specifically T. cruzi, the leading cause of myocarditis and heart failure in endemic regions of Latin American. However, as a practicing cardiac intensivist, my research program has shifted to the study of pediatric heart failure. I am interested in the response of resident progenitor cells to aging and heart failure. We suspect an epigenetic basis for cardiac progenitor cell activation in patients with premature ventricular failure secondary to exposure from neurohormonal axis activation. In partnership with the pediatric cardiovascular surgeons we created a cardiac biorepository to further translational research across the institution. Through collaboration with the Burridge laboratory I hope to determine the differentiation potential of resident cardiac cell populations and optimize direct reprograming of primary cardiac fibroblasts. We hope that knowledge of the phenotype of resident cells and their reprograming potential will enable clinical cryobanking, ex vivo reprogramming, and in situ cell manipulation to extend the lives of children and young adults with progressive heart failure from cardiomyopathy and congenital heart disease. We have implementing the Fontan Futures Initiative to optimize atrial tissue cryopreservation and enable clinical grade biobanking on behalf of patients with single ventricle physiology who are likely to progress to end-stage heart failure through a generous endowment from the Mathews Center for Cellular Therapy at Northwestern Medicine.