Alumni Members
Tony Huang
Undergraduate Student
Email: tonyh@illinois.edu
Lab: VMBSB 3811
Tony was a student majoring in Bioengineering at UIUC and worked on behavioral testing, genotyping and machine learning for data acquisition. He is starting his PhD in Electrical Engineering at Purdue University in the Fall of 2025 and enjoys playing with his cat, Ollie, along with hiking and photography in his free time.
Education
- BS, Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Doctoral Student, Electrical Engineering, Purdue University
Nathan Yoon
Undergraduate Student
Email: nbyoon2@illinois.edu
Lab: VMBSB 3811
In 2025 Nathan graduated in psychology from UIUC. He was involved in a variety of projects for the lab, with a primary focus on using intracranial viral reporters for circuit tracing studies of monoaminergic neurons with genomic imprinting allelic expression profiles. Alongside his research, he works in an emergency room as a licensed EMT and hopes to pursue a career as an emergency physician.
Education
- BS, Psychology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Luke Tamas
Undergraduate Student
Email: atamas3@illinois.edu
Lab: VMBSB 3811
Education
- BS, Psychology: Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Anne-Farah Usman
Undergraduate Student
Email: afusman2@illinois.edu
Anne-Farah is a graduate in Molecular Cellular Biology and minor in Public Health. Her contribution to the lab was studying the effects of nonconical imprinting of the Tyrosine Hydroxylase gene on social behaviors. In her free time she enjoys sailing, playing basketball, and taking long walks. After graduating in 2024, she entered the graduate program at the University of Chicago to pursue a PhD in the field of epigenetics and gene regulation.
Education
- BS, Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- Doctoral Student Human Genetics, Biological Sciences Division, University of Chicago
Rachel Eggleston
Academic Research Technologist
Email: rlegg29@illinois.edu
Office: VMBSB 3834
Rachel is originally from Bloomington-Normal, IL and graduated from Illinois State University in 2020. She is currently in the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine program at UIUC and plans to become a Zoological/Aquatic veterinarian. In her free time she enjoys playing with her forever kitties; Oakley, O’Malley, and Cortland. She also enjoys reading and spending time outside.
Education
- Doctor of Veterinary Medicine program, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- BS, General Biology, Illinois State University
Moudar Dweydari
Undergraduate Student
Email: mdweyd2@illinois.edu
As a 2024 graduate in Kinesiology Mo worked on behavioral testing and genotyping in the lab. He was accepted to Georgetown University Medical School starting fall of 2024.
Education
- BS Kinesiology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Medical Student, Georgetown University
Jill Hook
Undergraduate Student
Email: jrhook2@illinois.edu
Lab: VMBSB 3811
Jill’s research is focused on using immunohistochemistry to determine the identify of monoaminergic cell populations in the brains of mice. After graduating with a Bachelors degree from UIUC, she wishes to attend a Genetic Counseling Program where she then will be able to one day become a Genetic Counselor in either a hospital or research lab based setting.
Education
- BS in Integrative Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Student, Masters of Science in Human Genetics and Genomic Data Analytics, Keck Graduate Institute, Claremont, CA
Positions
- Genetic Testing Case Coordinator, Reproductive Genetic Innovations, Lockport, IL
Sam Rahman
Undergraduate Student
Email: srahma37@illinois.edu
Lab: VMBSB 3811
Sam uses computer vision and machine learning applications to make tools for generating and analyzing complex social behavior data from videos. His goal is to train existing software and methods to the task of measuring discrete aspects of social behaviors that is accurate, unbiased, and more reproducible than human experimenter observational scoring which is a time-consuming and susceptible to inter-investigator variability.
Education
- BS Individual Plans of Study in Neuroscience and Econometrics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Student, Masters of Science in Economics, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany
Leah Hinderman
Undergraduate Student
Email: lch3@illinois.edu
Lab: VMBSB 3811
Leah’s research involves performing mouse DNA genotyping/husbandry and using immunohistochemistry to view the expression of monoaminergic neurotransmitters in the brain of mice. After graduation, she will pursue a career in the medical device or pharmaceutical industry as an R&D engineer.
Education
- BS in Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Positions
- CQV Consultant, Sequence Inc., Boston, MA
Dr. Noelle James
Founding Lab Manager
Email: nholmes3@illinois.edu
My main research interests are behavioral genetics and neuroscience. Specifically, my work has focused on how genes contribute to social behavior.
Education
- PhD, Neuroscience, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- BA, Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis