Principal Investigator
Photo by Anna Oliveira
Annapurna (Ann) Poduri, MD, MPH
Director, Epilepsy Genetics Program, Boston Children’s Hospital
Co-Director, Program in Neurogenetics, Boston Children’s Hospital
Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School
Diamond Blackfan Chair of Neuroscience Research, Boston Children’s Hospital
Ann directs the Epilepsy Genetics Program at Boston Children’s Hospital as a clinician-scientist, with one hand in the clinic as a pediatric epileptologist and the other hand in the laboratory on a mission to identify the genetic underpinnings of epilepsy. She is a Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, and she is the Diamond Blackfan Chair of Neuroscience Research and the Co-Director of the Neurology Department’s Program in Neurogenetics at Boston Children’s.
Ann received her BA in Biology summa cum laude from Harvard University, her MD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and her MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. She completed pediatric training at Boston Children’s Hospital, child neurology residency at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and clinical neurophysiology fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital. It was through her rich clinical training that she developed research hypotheses that she pursued as a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Christopher A. Walsh, where she received rich training and mentorship in dominant and recessive neurogenetics and pioneered the study of mosaic (post-zygotic) mutation in developmental brain disorders that lead to epilepsy. Ann started the Epilepsy Genetics Program at Boston Children’s in 2011 to create a translational infrastructure for clinical and research activities focused on epilepsy genetics. She started her independent research laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital in 2013, integrating clinical research with bench laboratory research focusing primarily on the zebrafish model system.
Ann is a key participant in epilepsy genetics research at the local, national, and international level. She has been part of an international effort to understand the genetics of severe early-onset epilepsies; she served as the Boston Children’s Investigator for the NIH-funded Epilepsy Phenome/Genome Project (EPGP), a national, multi-centered research study, and Co-Investigator for the Epi4K follow-up study. She serves on the International League Against Epilepsy Genetics Commission and chairs the American Epilepsy Society/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) Benchmarks Stewards Committee.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Chris McGraw, MD, PhD
Research Associate
Chris joined the Poduri Laboratory and Epilepsy Genetics Program in July 2018. He is a physician-scientist with interests spanning epilepsy and clinical neurophysiology who makes use of diverse animal models as well as human data to improve our tools for treating seizure disorders. Chris received his BA in Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Rice University in 2004 and he completed a combined MD/PhD program at Baylor College of Medicine, earning a PhD in Developmental Biology under Dr. Huda Y. Zoghbi MD in 2012 before graduating in 2014. He attended residency in Adult Neurology at University of California San Francisco (UCSF), where he was awarded an R25 supplement to study epilepsy in zebrafish with Dr. Scott Baraban PhD. He is currently a fellow in Epilepsy at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in addition to continuing basic science research in zebrafish through the Epilepsy Genetics Program at Boston Children’s Hospital. Chris is interested in developing novel models of epilepsy in zebrafish with high translational potential, with a special interest in high-throughput whole organism screening strategies using zebrafish.
Anna Duncan, MD, MHS
Research Fellow
Anna is a neonatologist and physician-scientist who is interested in rare genetic causes of neurodevelopmental disorders. Her research is within both the Poduri and Agrawal laboratories at Boston Children’s Hospital. Anna obtained her BA in architectural studies from Brown University in 2008, and her MD and MHS degrees from the Yale School of Medicine in 2015. While at Yale she studied the genetics of heterotaxy under the mentorship of Dr. Mustafa Khokha, modeling causative genes in Xenopus. She completed her pediatrics residency at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia followed by her neonatology fellowship in the Harvard Combined Neonatal-Perinatal Fellowship Training program. Her fellowship research focused on cohorts of patients with neurodevelopmental disorders and novel variants in the genes KDM4B, MPP5, CLCN3, and EIF4A2. She is currently a neonatology attending at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children and an Instructor in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. In the Poduri laboratory, Anna is using zebrafish to model rare genetic causes of neurodevelopmental disorders.
Alissa D'Gama, MD, PhD
Research Fellow
Alissa joined the Poduri Laboratory and Epilepsy Genetics Program in 2021. She is a physician scientist with interests spanning neonatology, developmental neuroscience, and translational genomics. She received her BA in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Harvard College in 2011 and completed a combined MD-PhD program at Harvard/MIT, receiving a PhD in Biological and Biomedical Sciences under Dr. Christopher A. Walsh from Harvard Medical School in 2016 and a MD from Harvard Medical School/MIT Health Sciences and Technology in 2018. She completed pediatrics residency training in the Boston Combined Residency Program at Boston Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center on the Accelerated Research Pathway. She is currently a fellow in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine in the Harvard Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Fellowship Training Program. Alissa is co-mentored by Dr. Timothy Yu, and her research currently focuses on early onset epilepsies, somatic mosaicism, and neonatal genomics.
Sneham Tiwari, PhD
Research Fellow
Sneham joined the Poduri Laboratory and Epilepsy Genetics Program in February 2023. She recently received her Ph.D. in Biomedical sciences from Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine at Florida International University. With her background in neuroscience and molecular biology, she is interested in understanding the neurological disorders and factors involved in the abnormal functioning of the brain. Here in the Poduri Lab, she is pursuing her passion and studying epilepsy genetics with an emphasis on cellular mosaicism. She focuses on studying the somatic mutations occurring in genes of the mTOR pathway, targeting important genes that affect brain development. Sneham is interested in developing novel epilepsy zebrafish models, utilizing these models with high translational potential in deciphering mechanisms underlying neurological disorders, and translating towards high throughput drug screening and targeted efficient bioavailable therapeutics development to enhance patients’ quality of life.
Dustin Gable, MD, PhD
Research Fellow
Dustin joined the Poduri Laboratory and Epilepsy Genetics Program in 2022. He is a physician scientist and child neurologist interested in neurogenetic and neuromuscular disorders in children spanning adulthood. His roots are in rural Miller City, Ohio where he grew up on his family’s dairy farm. He went to The Ohio State University in Columbus where he completed his undergraduate degree in Biomedical Science and worked with Dr. Amanda Toland on microRNAs and genetic susceptibilities to skin cancer. He completed an MD/PhD program at the Johns Hopkins University with a PhD in Human Genetics. At Hopkins, he studied under Dr. Mary Armanios, elucidating the genetics of short telomere syndromes and pulmonary fibrosis, defining mechanisms of telomerase RNA biogenesis through generating mouse models. He completed pediatrics residency training at the Boston Combined Residency Program at Boston Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center and is currently completing a Child Neurology Residency at Boston Children’s Hospital. His interests in the lab include understanding mechanisms of monogenic childhood neurologic disorders through human and zebrafish models. He is currently focusing on understanding mechanisms of ankryin repeat proteins in neurodevelopmental disorders with epilepsy.
Research Assistants
Joseph Pascucci
Research Assistant
Coming soon…
Ibrahim Ndiaye
Research Assistant
Coming soon…
Zoe Gardner
Research Assistant
Coming soon…
Lab Staff
Laura Turner, DVM
Research Lab Supervisor
Laura joined the Poduri Lab and Epilepsy Genetics Program in June 2018 as the research lab supervisor. In addition to her role managing the research laboratory, she also performs electrophysiological recordings on zebrafish in the lab. Laura graduated from Amherst College with a BA in Psychology in 2008 and received her DVM from Tufts University in 2014. Prior to joining the Poduri Laboratory, she also worked with other zebrafish models of human disease in the Laboratory of Dr. Leonard Zon here at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Laboratory of Dr. Calum MacRae at Brigham & Women’s Hospital.
Mark LaCoursiere, MS
Lead Research Technologist
Mark is the lead research technologist for the Poduri Lab and Epilepsy Genetics Program. In this role, he is responsible for conducting biochemical experiments to find novel genetic etiologies of epilepsy. He is currently screening large numbers of epilepsy genes in zebrafish models using high-throughput behavioral assessment and automated seizure detection methods. Mark joined the Epilepsy Genetics Program in 2012 after graduating with a Wildlife Biology degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In 2019, he completed a Master’s degree, with a thesis on the expression of immediate early genes in zebrafish larvae with seizures.
Guoqi Zhang, MD, PhD
Research Technologist
Guoqi joined the Poduri Lab and Epilepsy Genetics Program in July 2020 as a research technologist. Guoqi received his MD in clinical medicine at Qingdao University Medical School in China and later completed his PhD in molecular medicine at Osaka University in Japan. He has a deep interest in genetics and its certain capacity to revolutionize clinical medicine. Currently, he is using the zebrafish as an animal model for epilepsy deploying in vivo image analysis of tissue dynamics, and genetic connections in the hopes of discovering a link between these genes and epilepsy. He is very excited to work collabollatively with the team to use the CRISPR/Cas9 system to combine developmental biology and pathology to illuminate the process of tissue homeostasis.