Bios

IRHS Team in Fall 2022 – Starting from Top left and moving by row: Felicity Crawford, Barkha Shah, Adam Labadorf, Theresa Rueger, Mae Rose Gott, TJ McKenna, and Melisa Osborne

Members of team (listed alphabetically): 

Adam Thomas Labadorf, labadorf@bu.edu 

Dr. Labadorf is an assistant professor in Neurology at Boston University School of Medicine and a BU Bioinformatics Program faculty member. His research is primarily focused on the genomics of neurodegenerative disease in humans, including analysis of high throughput genomics and transcriptomics data from both ante- and post-mortem patient tissues. He serves as director of the Bioinformatics Masters Program, where he oversees advising and curriculum development. He created and teaches a core course in the Masters curriculum related to translational bioinformatics, which includes human genetics and genomics topics. He also serves as the Director of Bioinformatics for the US Veteran’s Affairs PTSD Brain Bank located at the Boston VA, where he organizes and analyzes genomics data generated from the brain samples collected by the brain bank. Prior to his faculty appointment at BU in 2020, he founded and ran a collaborative research group at BU called the Bioinformatics Hub which matched Bioinformatics Masters students to research projects across the university and mentored many MS interns in the completion of these projects.

Barkha Shah, barkhas@bu.edu

Barkha Shah is a laboratory supervisor in the Biology department in the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University. She graduated with a BA in Biology from Boston University. Her knowledge and experience as a former student has greatly influenced the department and helped transform the lab classes. The classes she assists with include Microbiology, Human Infectious Diseases, Biology of Global Change, Evolutionary Ecology, Animal Behavior, and Vertebrate Zoology. She serves on the Biology Antiracism Committee.

Felicity Crawford, fcraw@bu.edu 

Felicity Crawford is a clinical associate professor of Special Education in the Teacher of Students with Moderate Disabilities Program. She brings the perspective of an experienced preK-12 educator who has worked for many years, and at every grade level, in racially and culturally diverse classroom settings. Prior to coming to Wheelock, Crawford served as project coordinator at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she successfully recruited, supervised, and taught several cohorts of master-level students seeking dual licensure in special and general education at the secondary level.

Melisa Osborne, melosbor@bu.edu 

Melisa Osborne, Ph.D. is a research assistant professor in the Graduate Program in Bioinformatics at Boston University.  Her current research involves studying the metabolic interactions between environmental microbes and includes project based mentoring of graduate, undergraduate, and high school students in the microbiology laboratory.  She began her career as a biochemist, with a B.A. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the College of Wooster and a doctorate degree in Biochemistry from Brandeis University.  After completing her graduate thesis on the single molecule kinetics of bacterial transcription factors in the lab of Jeff Gelles, she expanded her expertise to include in vivo molecular biology and microbiology in the labs of Simon Dove (Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School) and Alvaro Sanchez (currently of Yale University).  She spent a formative year (2014-2015) as a visiting assistant professor at the College of Wooster teaching chemistry and biochemistry, and her current role at BU includes teaching and advising in the Master’s Program in Bioinformatics.  She has been named to the CAS Designing Anti-racist Curricula Fellowship Program at Boston University for the upcoming 2022-2023 academic year.

Theresa Rueger, theresa.rueger@newcastle.ac.uk

Dr Theresa Rueger is a Lecturer (equiv. Assistant Professor) of Tropical Marine Biology at Newcastle University in the UK. Her research concerns the evolution of social and mating systems in coral reef fishes. Originally from Germany, Theresa completed her PhD at James Cook University in Australia and spent two years in Boston as a European Union Marie Curie Fellow before starting her own lab at Newcastle University.

Thomas “TJ” McKenna, tmckenna@bu.edu

TJ McKenna is a lecturer in Science Education at BU Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. He works at the nexus of policy, practice, and research in ways that deepen the understanding of how to make progress on the ecological problem of supporting teachers (pre-service & in-service) in their efforts to offer high quality science learning to all of our students. Dr. McKenna’s research focuses on understanding where, what, and how teachers learn to teach science over the course of their careers and how we can encourage and support ongoing changes to improve science teaching, and–more importantly– science learning. In addition, he is interested in designing and researching innovative approaches to professional development that strengthen science teacher learning and build organizational capacity for education reform.