Principle Investigator:
Dr. Joel A. Spencer – Associate Professor
Graduate Groups:
Bioengineering (BIOE)
Quantitative and Systems Biology (QSB)
Materials and Biomaterials Science and Engineering (MBSE)
Lab Members:
Christian Burns – graduate student, QSB
Christian Burns is a PhD student in the Quantitative and Systems Biology program. He joined the Spencer Lab as an undergraduate research assistant in Fall 2017 before graduating from UC Merced with a Bachelor’s in Molecular and Cell Biology in Spring 2019. His work involves in vivo imaging of the thymus and bone marrow.
Kai Hu – graduate student, bioengineering
Kai is a Ph.D. student in the bioengineering program. He earned his Bachelor’s in Physics at Sacramento State University and his Master’s in Physics at San Jose State University, focusing on both theoretical and experimental high-energy physics. He joined the Spencer Lab in the fall of 2022 in hopes of applying his physics background to clinically relevant research. His work is in the area of thymus regeneration.
Pushpita Sarker – graduate student, bioengineering
Pushpita joined the lab as a MS bioengineering student in the Fall of 2023. She works on developing better methods for thymus clearing and whole organ imaging. She took a semester off in Fall 2024 and later joined again in Spring 2025.
Lawrence Bowens – graduate student, bioengineering
Lawrence joined the lab as a NIH GRISE PhD fellow in bioengineering in July 2024. He is working to develop novel methods to image the native mouse thymus in vivo and will push the boundaries of our knowledge for how the blood vascular system plays a role in homeostasis and in thymus regeneration after damage.
Jason Ngo – graduate student, bioengineering
Jason joined the lab as a MS bioengineering student in the Fall of 2024. He quickly got involved in a collaborative project with the Sayantani Ghosh lab to develop novel perovskite nanocrystals as a potential NIR fluorophore for biomedical imaging applications. He successfully defended his MS exam and will officially graduate in Spring 2025.
Katrina Rose Estrella – graduate student, QSB
Katrina rotated in the Spencer lab in Fall 2024 as a NIH GRISE PhD student in the QSB program. Later, she joined the group in April 2025 and will be studying the endothelial cell compartment of the thymus in homeostatic and regenerative conditions.
Eric Brooks – undergrad, bioengineering
Eric joined the Spencer lab at the end of Spring 2024 as a TUSCEB fellow. He will officially become a PhD student in the bioengineering program in Fall 2025. Among other things, he will continue developing a thymus on-a-chip for studying the molecular and functional roles of thymic ECs.
Cecilia Alvarez – soon to be graduate student, QSB
Cecilia joined the Spencer lab in Spring 2025 and will officially become a PhD student in the QSB program in July 2025. She will study the endothelial cell compartment of the thymus in homeostatic and regenerative conditions.
Farhad Ghazali – B.S., Biology 2022, M.D. student in the UCSF PRIME program
Farhad was an undergraduate in the bioengineering program and then after graduating in 2022, he later joined the UCSF PRIME program as a medical student in 2024.
Marlene Marquez – B.S., Human Biology / Lab Manager
Robert Dudkin – Undergrad Bioengineering
Ryan McCoy – Undergrad Bioengineering
Alexia Salazar – Undergrad Bioengineering
Marc-Philippe Gnagne – Undergrad Bioengineering
Krist Villacorta – Undergrad Bioengineering
Sanmeet Deol – Undergrad Bioengineering, SJV PRIME+
Lab Alumni:
Dr. Negar Tehrani – QSB graduate 2023
Negar was a PhD student in Quantitative and Systems Biology. She earned her Bachelor’s in Cell and Molecular Biology and Master’s in Cancer Genetics at Azad University in Iran. She completed her second Master’s in Neuroscience and Tissue Engineering at Wichita State University. Next, she worked at UC Irvine in the Developmental Cell Biology Department and then joined the Spencer Lab in April of 2018 to study thymic seeding and regeneration. She is now a postdoctoral scholar at City of Hope in LA.
Dr. Nastaran Abbasizadeh – QSB graduate 2024
Nastaran was a PhD student in Quantitative and Systems Biology. She obtained her BS degrees in Hospital management and Biotechnology from Isafahan and Kashan Universities. She also obtained a Master’s degree of Nanobiotechnology from Tehran University. Nastaran joined the Spencer lab in summer 2019 and her project focuses on the investigation of microenvironmental changes to the bone marrow after cytotoxic conditioning in an Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) model. She is now a postdoctoral scholar at City of Hope in LA.
Reagan Chan – undergrad, Bioengineering
Reagan was a second-year bioengineering major working in the Spencer lab. He joined the Spencer lab in spring 2022 and has continued research in another group at UC Merced.
Victoria Okafor – B.S. Bioengineering 2023
Victoria was a fourth-year undergraduate student majoring in Bioengineering at UC Merced and graduated in May 2023. She joined the lab in June 2022 for UROC and worked on image analysis of thymus imaging datasets. She joined the MS program at UC Davis in the Fall of 2024.
Ruth Verrinder – B.S. Bioengineering 2022
Ruth completed a degree in Bioengineering at UC Merced in Fall 2022 and received the only Outstanding Student Award for her cohort of bioengineering students. She had joined the Spencer Lab in February of 2021 and remained a member until December 2022. She starts a PhD program in Biomedical Engineering at Duke University in Fall 2023 in the area of electronic-brain interfaces in the lab of Dr. Jonathan Viventi.
Iqbal Bhandal – B.S., BIOE & CSE 2021
Iqbal Bhandal completed a dual degree in Bioengineering and Computer Science and Engineering in 2020. In the future, he would like to work with Bioinformatics, Neuroinformatics, and Biotechnology with a focus towards prosthetics. He joined the lab during Summer of 2019. Iqbal worked on writing code for the lab and assisted with intravital imaging experiments.
Anmoljot Thandi – B.S., Bioengineering
Anmoljot Thandi completed his B.S. in Bioengineering in 2019. He helped develop machine learning processes to reduce image processing time for intravital imaging experiments while also assisting other projects in the Spencer Lab. Anmoljot is continuing to expand his abilities from within the Biomedical Industry.
Maria Mesina – B.S., Bioengineering
Maria (Mars) Mesina completed her B.S. in Bioengineering in 2019 and earned the only Outstanding Student Award for Bioengineering for 2019. As an undergraduate research assistant, she worked on the creation of a smartphone-based biosensor capable of detecting salivary uric acid levels. She also assisted with other experiments in the Spencer Lab and is continuing to expand her research skills beyond graduation.