Lawson Lab personnel

Nathan Lawson
Nathan received his B.S. in Zoology from the University of Rhode Island in 1994 and his PhD from Yale in Biology in 1999. After a postdoc at National Institutes of Health, he joined the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 2002.  He is currently a Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cell, and Cancer Biology.

  • Feston Idrizi

    Feston Idrizi

    Academic Role: Research Technician

    Feston received his B.A. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Clark University in Worcester.  He is responsible for maintaining most of the transgenic and mutant zebrafish lines in the Lawson Lab facility.  Feston also provides support for multiple ongoing projects in the Lawson Lab.

  • Anahita Mojiri

    Anahita Mojiri, PhD

    Academic Role: Postdoc

    Ana received her Ph.D. from the University of Alberta in Canada in 2016 and joined the Lawson Lab soon thereafter. She is currently studying transcriptional control of vascular development using the zebrafish as a model system.

  • Daneal Portman

    Daneal Portman

    Academic Role: Research Technician

    Daneal received his B.S. in Biology from UMass Amherst in 2016.  He is currently a research technician in the Lawson Lab working with Yu-Huan Shih.

  • Yu-Huan Shih

    Yu-Huan Shih, PhD

    Academic Role: Postdoc

    Yu-Huan received his Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham in the UK in 2010. Following  postdoctoral training at the Mayo Clinic, Yu-Huan joined the Lawson Lab in 2016. His projects include investigating the development of mural cells and applying chemical genetic strategies to dissect vascular development. 

  • Masahiro Shin

    Masahiro Shin, PhD

    Academic Role: Instructor

    Masahiro received his Ph.D. from the Tokyo Metropolitan University in Japan. He has been funded in the Lawson Lab by fellowships from the the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the Uehara Memorial Foundation. He is currently studying lymphatic development in the zebrafish.

    See Masa's Lawson Lab publications. 

  • Samir Sissaoui

    Samir Sissaoui, PhD

    Academic Role: Postdoc

    Samir joined the Lawson Lab from the University of Birmingham in 2010.  Samir's work focuses on identifying the underlying epigenetic mechanisms that control artery and vein identity in the human genome.

  • Christofer Welsh

    Christofer Welsh

    Academic Role: Undergrad

    Christofer is currently an undergraduate at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).  He began working in the lab in 2015.  He is currently working on his Major Qualifying Project (MQP),  focuses on small molecule screening for compounds that perturb cardiovascular development.