HEART-GeN Lab at ABRCMS 2025
HEART-GeN Lab at ABRCMS 2025
We had an incredible week at ABRCMS 2025 in San Antonio, TX! The HEART-GeN Lab came out in full force, and I’m proud to share some of the many highlights from this inspiring, energizing, and impactful conference.
🔁 Then & Now: Full Circle Moment
Last year, I attended ABRCMS 2024 as a recipient of a Judges Travel Award. This year, I returned — not alone, but with six outstanding undergraduate researchers from our lab, all presenting their original work.
This full-circle moment was a powerful reminder of how mentorship, opportunity, and community can shape the next generation of scientists.
🔬 Undergraduate Research on Display
Over the course of three packed days, our lab delivered 5 poster presentations and 1 oral talk — all led by undergraduate researchers. Here’s a breakdown of the incredible work they shared:
📅 Thursday
🧠 Emma Tsai (SROP 2025) Poster: Schizophrenia and suicide risk: computational insights
- Track: Computational Biology
- Emma received a Travel Award to attend ABRCMS and will be starting medical school next year!
📅 Friday
🧬 Yiju Choi (Senior) Oral Presentation: Functional annotation of ancestry-associated gene expression in immune and vascular pathways
- Track: Developmental Biology
- Yiju delivered a confident, insightful talk and tackled tough questions with grace.
🌱 Elisa K. Johnson (Junior) Poster: Environmental drivers of gene expression in neurological disorders
- Track: Computational Biology
- Recently awarded an Academic Year Research Grant (AYURG) to expand her epigenetic work.
🧠 Nia Terry (Junior, SROP 2025) Poster: Epigenetic clocks and schizophrenia risk
- Track: Neuroscience
- Nia had the largest poster audience of our group — a true standout!
🤖 Javier Hernandez (Junior) Poster: Using deep learning to build gene-gene networks (VAE modeling)
- Track: Computational Biology
- Funded by a Summer Undergraduate Research Grant (SURG), Javier worked full-time on this project last summer.
📅 Saturday
🧬 Sierra Mannion (Sophomore, URAP 2025) Poster: Incorporating local ancestry into gene expression modeling (localQTL)
- Track: Computational Biology
- Sierra was introduced to research and coding through URAP and won Best Poster Presentation for a sophomore in her track — at her first conference!
🧑🏽⚖️ Judging & Service
I also had the pleasure of serving as a poster judge in Computational Biology on both Thursday and Friday. A huge thank you to the Judges Leads (Bolaji Thomas, Jeanette Papp, and Dana Crawford) for running such an organized and engaging process.
It’s always a privilege to support emerging scientists and learn from the next wave of ideas in our field.
🎭 Lab Bonding & Wicked: For Good
After a full Friday of science, we wrapped the evening with a lab dinner and saw Wicked: For Good together in San Antonio. It was the perfect way to celebrate a week of hard work, growth, and collaboration.
🧪 Final Reflections
ABRCMS 2025 was a vivid reminder of why we do what we do — to create space, opportunity, and belonging in science.
I left the conference deeply inspired by the brilliance of our students, the generosity of this community, and the promise of the future they’re building.
Thank you to everyone who made this experience possible.
