Rathnakumar Kumaragurubaran, PhD

Director

Dr. Rathnakumar received his PhD in biotechnology in 2017 at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. During his graduate years he got trained in molecular biology and high-resolution microscopy. His postdoctoral fellowship involved the use of multi-omics approaches to profile active gene regulatory elements in mouse models of liver and heart disease. He Spear-headed the NGS workflow development team in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Wilson (Genetics & Genomic medicine program, The Hospital for Sick Children) in creating NGS based workflows by working with internal stakeholders and external collaborators to implement a variety of NGS based assays, design insightful Proof of Concept (POC) experiments to determine technical feasibility including predicting technical effort and risk. In his current role, he participates in assessment and prioritization of single cell/spatial assays to evaluate new, innovative genomics technology and bioinformatics tools for potential service offerings. As director, he supports internal and federal user grant applications and expanded capabilities within the facility, delivering workshops and presentations to stakeholders to promote awareness of the facility. He possesses a well-rounded genomics skill set to design thoughtful experiments, guide bioinformatics analysis and interpretations, and propose future directions to peers and management.

Alexander Blaylock, BS

Research Assistant II

Alexander completed his BS in 2021 from the University of Cincinnati and has been with the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center Single Cell Genomics Core since October of 2021 as a research assistant. His primary tasks within the facility are running the 10x Genomics Visium Spatial Gene Expression service within the facility and generating sequence-ready libraries of cDNA from all single cell assays designed by 10x Genomics. His contributions to spatial omics service include project planning, quality control on RNA isolated from tissue sections, H&E staining, imaging prepared tissue sections, and processing the Visium experimental assay. He also performs quality control checks on DNA and RNA samples processed by or submitted to the facility.

Pratik Mehta, BS, MS
Research Assistant III

Pratik received his BS in Molecular and Cell Biology in 2017 and later his MS in Applied Genomics in 2021, both from the University of Connecticut. He joined the Single Cell Genomics Facility in the summer of 2024. Currently, he supports quality control checks on DNA and RNA samples processed by or submitted to the facility. He also supports the library preparation steps of single cell experiments. He has a range of bioinformatics research experience working on downstream data analysis of different types of data such as bulk RNA-seq and scRNA-seq using mainly R packages.

Kelly Rangel, BS, MS

Senior Research Assistant

Kelly completed her MS in biomedical research technologies from the University of Cincinnati in 2021 and has been with the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center Single Cell Genomics Facility since September 2015. She has successfully handled thousands of single-cell samples using two different platforms: the Fluidigm C1 instrument and the 10x Genomics Chromium and Chromium X Controllers. Her primary responsibilities are to assess the quality of single-cell/nuclear suspensions, educate researchers about suspension quality, provide guidance on how to procure protocol compliant samples, and conduct single-cell assays. She is proficient in scRNA-Seq, scATAC-Seq and Multiome ATAC + gene expression experiments and is adept with techniques such as CITE-seq, hashing (both antibody and lipid), and CRISPR screens. She routinely provides one-on-one consultations to researchers on how these techniques function and aid in their experimental design. In addition to single-cell technologies, she also performs bulk RNA-seq assays, quality control, and qPCR assays and has designed/conducted experiments with multi-color (10+ fluorophores) panels using spectral flow cytometry.

Shawn Smith, BS, MS

Senior Research Assistant

Shawn completed his MS in biological sciences in June 2002 from the University of Cincinnati and started his position at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center Single Cell Genomics Facility in July 2002. He has over 20 years of experience in genomic technologies. That includes using the Affymetrix GeneChip platform for microarray experiments, and assays from Tecan Genomics, Takara, and Illumina to run bulk RNA-Seq samples with limited amounts of starting material. For the last ten years he has been using single cell technology from 10x Genomics and Fluidigm. For the 10x Genomics platform, he has expertise in processing samples using single cell RNA-Seq, single cell ATAC-Seq, and Multiome assays. He has extensive experience in CITE-seq, TCR and BCR enrichment reactions using Feature Barcoding technology for investigators using antibody or lipid cell hashing. Shawn’s additional responsibilities include presenting an overview of the single cell or bulk RNA-Seq technology to new investigators. He also is responsible for billing investigators using the facility’s services.

George Yoshida, BS

Research Assistant III

George received his BS in biochemistry from the University of Cincinnati and joined the Single Cell Genomics Facility in the summer of 2023. He supports all the services and functions of the facility, from single cell experiments to spatial transcriptomics and everything in-between. He has a wide range of research experience including cell culturing, mass spectrometry, coding, and sequencing data analysis.