Group alumni

Jacob Lei
Departed in August 2024, BCMP 2024 Summer Scholar
jacob.lei@rice.edu

Originally from the Bay Area, Jacob is currently attending Rice University studying Bioengineering. At Rice, Jacob worked in Dr. Jeffrey Tabor’s lab, where he studied copper sensing bacterial two-component systems in the human gut microbiome. Jacob joined the Devlin Lab in Summer 2024 as a BCMP Summer Scholar, and is excited to study the effects of inhibiting bile salt hydrolases.

Outside of the lab, Jacob enjoys fencing, hiking, and making and eating new foods.

Wei Li, Ph.D.
Departed in May 2024, now a Postdoc at Lawrence Livermore National Lab

Originally from Singapore, Wei earned her B.S. in Chemistry from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2018. At UCLA, she worked with Dr Ken Houk, where she studied the mechanisms of enzyme-catalyzed and Lewis acid-catalyzed Diels-Alder reactions and their origins of stereoselectivity. Wei joined the Devlin Lab in 2019, and she investigated the bacterial biosynthesis of secondary bile acids that have effects on host immune and metabolic systems.

Outside the lab, you can catch Wei spending her time exploring the food scene, binging on Netflix shows, and trying to bake successfully.

Megan McCurry, Ph.D.
Departed in May 2024, now a Scientist at Holobiome

Originally from Atlanta, GA, Megan earned her BS in Biochemistry & Cell Biology from Rice University in 2017. As an undergraduate researcher in Dr. Yousif Shamoo’s lab at Rice, she studied experimental evolution to antibiotic resistance as a method to understand antibiotic mechanisms of action. In the Devlin lab, Megan worked to discover novel steroid metabolism by gut bacteria and to understand the impact of these metabolites on human health and disease. She defended her thesis in May 2023 and worked in a postdoc position to finish up a few of her projects.

Outside of the lab, Megan enjoys singing (and is a member of the Longwood Chorus), bouldering, seeing movies, attending concerts, and exploring new cuisines and restaurants with friends.

Fei Yi, Ph.D.
Departed in December 2023, now a Research Scientist at Origin Materials

Fei is from Shandong Province, China. In 2013, Fei started his doctoral research at Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM), Chinese Academy of Sciences, in the lab of Dr. Yue-Wei Guo. His doctoral research focused on the discovery of marine natural products. In 2015, Fei won the Syngenta-SIMM-PhD Fellowship, and he was co-mentored by his industrial advisor Dr. Yu-Cheng Gu. He got his Ph.D. degree in June 2018, and then Fei joined Dr. Ben Shen’s lab as a postdoctoral research associate at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI). At TSRI, he was interested in the biosynthesis of actinobacterial natural products and the discovery of microRNA binders and gram-negative bacteria inhibitors from natural products. Then, after his first postdoctoral training, he joined the Devlin lab in January 2022 as a postdoctoral research fellow. Fei’s research interests in Devlin lab centered around the characterization of factors affecting microbiome shifts and molecules from bacteria that prevent weight gain after bariatric surgery.

Out of the lab, Fei enjoys biking, playing table tennis and peak ball, kayaking, fishing, and cooking delicious food.

Snehal Nitin Chaudhari, Ph.D.
Departed in 2023, now an Assistant Professor at the Wisconsin-Madison Department of Biochemistry

Snehal is from Mumbai, India where she completed her Bachelors degree in Biotechnology. She then completed her MS in Biotechnology at Pennsylvania State University, and her Ph.D. in Cellular Biology at the University of Georgia under the guidance of Dr. Edward Kipreos. Her graduate work focused on establishing the first in vitro cell culture system for C. elegans germ stem cells, and studying the role of mitochondrial morphology in aging. As a postdoc in the Devlin lab, she studied the signaling pathways induced by gut bacterial metabolites using human and murine cell lines.

Lina Yao, Ph.D.
Departed in 2021, now a Senior Scientific Researcher at Genentech

Lina earned her Ph.D. in microbiology from National University of Singapore under the general direction of Dr. Lee Yuan Kun. She was also co-supervised by Dr. Tan Tin Wee with a focus on bioinformatics with high performance computing. Her graduate work focused on molecular genetics and global transcriptomic analysis of lipid metabolism in microalgae for biofuel production. As a postdoc in the Devlin Lab, Lina investigated how gut bacteria metabolize bile acids and steroid-like compounds and the effects of these bacterial metabolites on the host.

Arijit (Ari) A. Adhikari, Ph.D.
Departed in 2021, now a Senior Scientist at Merck

Ari received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University under the guidance of Professor John D. Chisholm. In the Chisholm lab, his research primarily focused on the development of new synthetic methodologies using trichloroacetimidates, one of the most significant achievements being its application towards the synthesis of pyrroloindoline natural products. As a postdoc in the Devlin lab, Ari designed, synthesized, and utilized small molecule inhibitors to modulate different bacterially produced bile acids in order to study the effects of these compounds on the host.

Aiden Kolodziej
BCMP Summer 2019 Scholar

Aiden was a student at Cornell University, majoring in Biochemistry. Aiden spent the summer of 2019 in the Devlin Lab as a BCMP Summer Scholar.

Sula Ndousse-Fetter
Departed in 2019

Sula completed her undergraduate thesis in the area of antibiotic production in microbial communities in the Kolter Lab in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Harvard Medical School. She moved across the street to support the Devlin Lab’s research on bile acid metabolism by gut bacteria.

Sarah Seaton, Ph.D.
Departed in 2017, now a Senior Scientist at Indigo Agriculture

After two years as an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Asheville, where she explored research topics ranging from analysis of microbial communities associated with carnivorous pitcher plants to antibiotic production by soil bacteria, Sarah returned to Boston as a Research Associate in the Devlin Laboratory. Her work focused on how and why bacteria in the gut transform small molecules and how these molecules ultimately influence the host, in particular, host metabolism and the host immune system.