Roddy O'Sullivan Ph.D.
MICHELLE LYNSKEY
DR. Ragini BHargava Ph.D
Dr. ANNE WONDISFORD PH.D (kinda MD)
Sandy (the boss)
Oliver (Ollie) Freund
Jean-Baptiste (JB) Ouriou
Roddy is the PI. His favorite movie is Jaws while his favorite pastime is working on his garden, finding new music and performing chores for his two corgis and pug/shihtzu arch-mutt. The things that Roddy loves most about Pittsburgh are Frick Park, The Cathedral of Learning, the bookshops and record stores in Squirrel Hill and cycling the steep streets of Pittsburgh (yikes!).
Roddys main job in the lab is to find new and novel ways of keeping postdocs, grad students and Sandy busy and out of mischief! Always eager to chat with interested students and postdocs. He can be reached at osullivanr@upmc.edu.
Michelle is a graduate student in the Molecular Pharmacology program. She is from Falls Church, Virginia but most of her family is from and lives in Pittsburgh. Michelle graduated with a B.S. in Biology from the University of Virginia - which has caused some tension with VT grad Nicole, next to whom she sits and gloats! She worked as an undergraduate researcher studying the regulation of planar cell polarity during forebrain, utricular, and cochlear development. This made her a perfect fit for the O’Sullivan Lab. Michelle is working on histone chaperones and ALT.
Outside the lab, Michelle is a big basketball fan who loves the Boston Celtics and the University of Virginia Men’s Basketball team (go Hoos!). In addition to watching and playing basketball, binge watching Love Island and cooking for her friends, Michelles favorite thing to do is to play with her beloved dog Belly!
Ragini grew up in Mumbai, India and did her graduate work in the lab of Jeremy Stark at the City of Hope, where she focused on delineating the distinct repair outcomes mediated by canonical non-homologous end joining. She loves to cook and bake, especially during times of high stress. When asked for a weird trait Ragini disclosed having an abnormally large, ever-growing collection of soft toys. She spends her free time going to concerts, watching Broadway musicals, online shopping, trying new restaurants, and watching movies. Though she claims to only watch high minded intellectually stimulating TV, Ragini really prefers WWE and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Ragini is working on everything and anything to do with telomeric chromatin dynamics in ALT cancer cells
Newly minted PhD, Anne Radovick Wondisford is an MSTP student. This means she is not to be trifled with. Having successfully navigated her way through the mean back-alleys of the University of Pennsylvania, where she incidentally contributed to seminal work from Dr. Roger Greenbergs lab, Anne found her way to Pittsburgh. She just showed up one day and said “I’m here to do some BrdU-IPs”. That was that. She was in!! In the lab, Anne is working on PARP. This also means she is not to be trifled with.
Anne is the proud owner of a very cute, but for sure confused, dog named Wiener (He is a Yorkie!). Anne is an expert shopper, sensing bargains everywhere, seasoned angler and a semi-professional baker of Serbian breads.
Sandy is the lab guru, with 25 years of running the show in various labs here at Pitt. There ain’t nuttin’ she can’t do - or so she thought until she joined the O’Sullivan lab where she has gamely tried, yet ultimately failed, to keep mischievous graduate students and PI in check! Still, if anyone needs something done, Sandy will see it done!
Outside lab, Sandy is all-action. She is all about fishing in the lakes of Pennsylvania or Alaska, enjoys long walks with her hubby and working on their lakeside retreat before settling in and keeping it real with a nice IPA!
After moving from San Diego to Pitt for his undergrad, Oliver joined the lab as an undergraduate researcher in Fall 2023. He has been mentored by Anne who has been showing him the ropes wrt all things PARP and ALT.
As part of his student experience, Ollie has become a dedicated consumer of chicken wings and is rarely without his trusty bottle of Pepto! Though youthful, Ollie’s precise age is up for debate - with lab guesses ranging from 19-31. It’s the mystery that keeps us up at night!
Jean-Baptiste (JB) is an intern from Strasbourg, France who will be with us for 6 months. Originally from Loire Valley (Anjou) in France, JB brings a new level of European sophistication to the lab. His knowledge of fine wines and potions that give super human strength are completely wasted on his lab mates. For his internship, JB is working on proteomics of ALT telomeres while also digging into some high-risk/ high-reward technical experiments with Ragini.
LAB ALUMNI
Laura Garcia Exposito - former postdoc now research specialist at Universidad de la Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
Jonathan Barosso Gonzalez - former postdoc now PI at Universidad de la Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
SongMy Hoang - former graduate student now a field application scientist at Lumicks, Cambridge MA.
Nicole Kaminski - former graduate student now a research specialist at Moma Therapeutics, Cambridge MA.
Marco de Vitis - visiting scientist now at Eppendorf Rome.
Justin Roncaioli - former research assistant now doing a postdoc at Striepen Lab at Penn.
