Jack Humphrey, PhD
Principal Investigator 

Jack obtained his Ph.D. in Clinical Neuroscience from University College London in 2019, after spending time as a visiting researcher at Stanford University and as a computational scientist at Inivata Ltd, a Cambridge, UK-based biotech startup. He joined the lab of Towfique Raj at Mount Sinai as a postdoctoral fellow in 2019, and was promoted to Instructor in 2021. He is a Visiting Scientist at the New York Genome Center.  In his spare time he goes rock climbing and plays the bass. Read his CV.

Alice Maria Giani, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow (co-mentored with Dr Towfique Raj)

Alice is a physicist by training who transitioned to study Neuroscience in her Master’s studies at the University of Milano-Bicocca . During her PhD at the University of Milan and Yale University she investigated the molecular mechanisms underpinning neurodevelopmental disorders using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and functional genomics. She joined Dr. Shuibing Chen's lab at Weill Cornell Medicine to develop a barcoded human iPSC library and investigate the risk loci associated with Zika virus and other viral infections in neurons. She then joined Dr. Li Gan’s lab at Weill Cornell Medicine to investigate modifiers of tau aggregation and propagation.  She is currently exploring the role of aberrant mRNA splicing in ALS, FTD, and AD using single-cell approaches.

Brooke Friedman
PhD student  (co-mentored with Dr Towfique Raj)

Brooke is a neuroscience Ph.D. student at Mount Sinai who is originally from Santa Clarita, California. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame in May 2024, where she studied neuroscience, linguistics, and global engagement.  She is exploring the role of TDP-43 in Alzheimer's disease and Frontotemporal dementia. In her free time, she enjoys doing aerial silks and running through Central Park.

Faith Singh
Master's student

Alexander Chung
MD/PhD student (starting Summer 2025)

Alexander is an MD/PhD student who graduated from Cornell University. For his senior honors thesis, he researched the role of olfactory sensory neuron-derived extracellular vesicles in peripheral nerve regeneration in the lab of Dr. David Lin. After graduation, he worked in the lab of Dr. Mark Albers at Massachusetts General Hospital where he studied type I interferon neuroinflammation in the context of Alzheimer's Disease and ALS. He is currently interested in studying the genetics of immune cells in neurodegenerative diseases.

Ali Oku
Bioinformatics Analyst, New York Genome Center

Faith graduated from Hunter College with a Bachelors’ degree in biological sciences with a concentration of neurobiology. Her previous experience was as a clinical research coordinator at Lenox Hill Hospital Department of Neurosurgery. She is currently a Master’s student in Biomedical Sciences at Mount Sinai. She is exploring  shared and specific gene expression changes in ALS postmortem tissues using multi-omic integration.

Ali Oku is a bioinformatics analyst with a Master's in Bioinformatics and Computer Science. He currently works at the New York Genome Center specializing in analyzing bulk and single-cell RNA-seq datasets across a diverse range of diseases.  He works with Jack on analyzing the New York Genome Center ALS Consortium cohort.

Judy Liang
Master's student

Judy is currently a Master's student in Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania. In the Humphrey lab she is exploring the genetic interaction and overlap between ALS and FTD using postmortem tissue transcriptomics.

Rahat Hasan
Master's Student, now at Bristol Myers Squibb

Flora (Hyomin) Seo
Master's Student, now at Mount Sinai Center for Advanced Genomics Technology

Dr Towfique Raj
Departments of Neuroscience, Genetics and Genomic Sciences
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
https://rajlab.org/

Dr Kurt Farrell
Department of Pathology
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
https://www.kurtfarrelllab.org/

Prof John Crary
Department of Pathology
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
http://www.crarylab.org/home.html

Prof Pietro Fratta
Department of Neuromuscular Disease
Institute of Neurology, University College London
https://www.frattalab.org/