People

Ralda Nehme, PhD

Principal Investigator

Ralda Nehme is a principal investigator in the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she also directs the stem cell program. Nehme has received recognition and funding from numerous groups, including the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative, the Maternal and Child Health Research Institute at Stanford University, and the National Institute of Mental Health. Nehme received her B.S. at the American University of Beirut. She completed her Ph.D. at Dartmouth College, where she studied neuronal development in C. elegans. She then conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University, where she became interested in modeling psychiatric disease, and developed efficient methods to generate human stem cell-derived neural cells.

Current lab members

Derek Hawes

Lab operations supervisor

Vy Ngo, PhD

Postdoc

Co-mentored with Sami Farhi

Milena Andzelm, MD, PhD

Instructor, HMS

Co-mentored with Steve McCarroll

Jax Xu, PhD

Postdoc

Co-mentored with Sami Farhi

Rachel Battaglia, PhD

Postdoc


Diogo Marques, PhD

Postdoc


Margaret Ho, PhD

Postdoc

Co-mentored with Evan Macosko

Adrianna Maglieri

Project coordinator

Sonia Bolshakova, MS

Computational Associate


Sartaj Habib

Research Associate

Ilinca Mazureac 

Research Associate

Autumn Johnson

Research Associate

Sarah Rojas

Undergraduate student

Emily Hansen

Undergraduate student

Akhilsai Damera

Undergraduate student


Alumni

Noah Pettinari

Computational Associate

Jointly mentored with Steve McCarroll

Dhara Liyanage

Undergraduate student

Now: RA, Rockefeller University 

Connie Yu

Undergraduate student

Now: RA, Harvard University 

Matthew Tegtmeyer

Graduate (Doctoral) Student

Now: Assistant Professor, Purdue University

Isabel Flessas

Undergraduate student

Now: RA, Harvard University 

Serwah Danquah

Research Associate

Now: Ph.D. candidate, University of Washington

Vera Valakh, PhD

Research Scientist

Now: principal scientist, 

Stoke Therapeutics

Emily Peirent

Research Associate

Now: Ph.D. candidate, University of Michigan

Ethan Crouse

Research Associate

Now: in Boulder, CO

Hilena Gebre

Research Associate

Now: medical student at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University

Kathryn Boit

Undergraduate student

Now: Ph.D. candidate, Yale University 

Aditi Trehan

Research Associate

Now: Ph.D. candidate, Columbia University 

Theresa Chen 

Research Associate

Now: Ph.D. candidate, University of Washington

Autumn Bandy

Summer student, New Mexico State University

Jesus Velazques

Summer student, UCLA

Marina Saffold

Summer student, Pomona College

Sovann Woodin 

Summer student, Bunker Hill Community College

Shaday Ricker 

Summer student, Bunker Hill Community College

Adhvaith Sridhar


Maria Girgis 


Eman Abdurezak


Neena Tarafdar


Isaac Schueng 


Siddarth Nirgudkar 


High school students