DCMB Alumni

Emily Wittrup defended her dissertation this May, marking a successful end to her PhD journey.

For his dissertation, Li built diaTracer, a computational framework that helps researchers analyze data. In proteomics research, mass spectrometry is widely used to identify and quantify proteins in complex biological samples.

On June 13, 2025, he defended his thesis titled “Observability and higher-order methods for biomarker discovery,” and his mentor was professor Indika Rajapakse.

On June 9, 2025, Dr. Yang defended his dissertation titled: “Holistic Integration of Deep Learning Models for Mass Spectrometry-Based Peptide Identification.” His mentor was professor Alexey Nesvizhskii.

Joel Eliason, Ph.D., developed Bayesian statistical tools to analyze and interpret the spatial relationships between the different types of cells present in a tumorous environment. His results were presented in his Ph.D. dissertation, titled “Multiscale statistical models for understanding tumor microenvironment heterogeneity,” and defended on May 28, 2025. His mentor was Arvind Rao, Ph.D., DCMB, and he also worked closely in collaboration with Michele Peruzzi, Ph.D., a biostatistician in the School of Public Health and a CCMB member.

Thursday, May 15, 2025, Yueyang Shen defended his Ph.D. dissertation titled “Complex time representation and observability of repeated measurement processes with applications of spacekime analytics.” His mentor was professor Ivo Dinov.

Thomas Chen, M.S., graduated in Spring 2025 from the Gilbert S. Omenn Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics (DCMB) with a Master's in Science degree. He started his bioinformatics studies at U-M as a senior student majoring in Microbiology, and attended DCMB’s Accelerated MS program. In June 2025, he will pursue his training to become a scientist-physician at the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD Program.

On March 21, 2025, Jialin Liu, Ph.D., defended his doctoral dissertation titled “Mapping Cell Fate Transitions from Single-Cell Multi-Omic and Spatial Transcriptomic Data.” His mentor was professor Joshua Welch, Associate Professor in the Gilbert S. Omenn Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics (DCMB) and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan.

Friday, June 21, 2024, D. Ford Hannum, Ph.D., defended his dissertation titled “Applications of emerging transcriptomic technologies and methods to gain insight into the human reproductive system."

Meet Dr. April Kriebel, a recent graduate from the Welch lab. On March 11, 2024, April Kriebel, Ph.D., defended her doctoral dissertation titled: “Computational Methods for Linking Molecular and Anatomical Data with Spatial Transcriptomics.”

Meet Rucheng Diao, Dr. of Bioinformatics

Meet Kelly Sovacool, a PhD candidate in DCMB and in Pat Schloss’s lab (Microbiology and Immunology)

Meet Chen Sun, a PhD candidate in Ryan Mills's lab in the Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics.

Meet Cathy Smith, a PhD candidate in Jacob Kitzman's lab

Meet Nanxiang “Sam” Zhao, a PhD candidate in Alan Boyle's lab