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Lab Members

Qin Fu, PhD
Senior Project Advisor, Director, High-Throughput Center

Qin Fu, PhD, completed graduate school at University of Minnesota with a PhD in genetics. Her primary research interests include automation and sample preparation in line with mass spectrometry- and antibody-based protein quantification methods. Fu joined the Van Eyk Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in 2004 and has been at Cedars-Sinai since June 2014. Her work focuses on the WISE and chronic kidney disease research projects.

Dawn Chen, PhD
Assistant Professor, Research Scientist I

The primary interest of Dawn Chen, PhD, involves translating leading-edge proteomics discoveries and validation technologies into high throughput clinical and research applications that inform human disease. These analytical applications span from the quantifications from small molecular metabolites across to large biomolecules such as disease-modified proteins. Chen earned her PhD in analytical chemistry from University of Alberta, Canada. Prior to joining Cedars-Sinai in 2014, she was a senior researcher at Johns Hopkins University and subsequently at Quest Diagnostics, Inc.

Justyna Fert-Bober, PhD
Project Scientist, Cardiovascular Disease and Autoimmunity

Justyna Fert-Bober, PhD, earned her bachelor of science (honors) in biochemistry and molecular biology and her master of science in molecular biology from the Wroclaw University. She received her PhD from the Medical University in Poland. During her graduate work, she also studied abroad at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, where her research focused on biomarker discovery for acute heart injury using proteomics. In 2008, Fert-Bober joined the Division of Cardiology at Johns Hopkins as a postdoctoral scientist. She joined Cedars-Sinai in 2014 as a project scientist.

Ronald Holewinski, PhD
Project Scientist, Posttranslational Modification Analysis

Ronald Holewinski, PhD, completed graduate school at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, with a PhD in chemistry. Holewinski's primary research interests include posttranslational protein modifications and the role in cardiovascular disease. He joined the Van Eyk Laboratory at Johns Hopkins in 2009. He has been directing mass spectrometry at the Cedars-Sinai Advanced Clinical Biosystems Research Institute since 2014.

Sarah Parker, PhD
Project Scientist, Proteomic Signaling in Aortic Disease

Sarah Parker, PhD, received her doctorate in physiology from the Medical College of Wisconsin. She began working with Jennifer Van Eyk, PhD, as a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University in the summer of 2011, on a collaborative project with Hal Dietz, MD, in the Institute for Genetic Medicine studying the molecular mechanisms of aortic aneurysm. The Van Eyk Laboratory has maintained a collaboration with the Dietz Lab. Parker is now a project scientist at Cedars-Sinai where she is expanding her work exploring basic biological mechanisms that drive aortic disease, with the goal of translating these discoveries into effective therapeutic interventions.

Vidya Venkatraman, MSc
Research Informatics Systems Administrator

Vidya Venkatraman, MSc, worked for a systems biology company prior to receiving her master of science in bioinformatics from Johns Hopkins University. She worked for the Johns Hopkins University/National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Proteomics Center for five years under the supervision of Jennifer Van Eyk, PhD, before moving to Cedars-Sinai. Her major focus involves bioinformatics approaches and developing pipelines to handle high-throughput proteomics, large-scale clinical cohorts and biomarker discovery.

Irina Tchernyshyov, MSc
Principal Mass Spectrometry Applications Specialist
Mitra Mastali, PhD
High-Throughput Scientist, Quantitative Biomarker Analysis

Mitra Mastali, PhD, received her doctorate from the Cedars-Sinai Graduate Program in biomedical science and translational medicine. She joined the Van Eyk Laboratory and Advanced Clinical Biosystems Research Institute in December 2014 as a high-throughput scientist working on detection and quantification of biomarkers using Simoa, a new and revolutionary digital approach to immunoassays.

Miroslava Stastna, PhD
Project Scientist, Proteomics of Cardiovascular Diseases

Miroslava Stastna, PhD, completed her master’s degree in chemistry at Charles University in Prague and received her doctorate in analytical chemistry from Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. She joined the Van Eyk Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in 2005 for two years, with repeated stays in 2008 and 2010. Stastna has been working in the Van Eyk Lab at Cedars-Sinai since April 2016. Her research projects included characterization and identification of proteins secreted by cardiac cells under various induced conditions by using proteomic approaches and mass spectrometry.

Koen Raedschelders, PhD
Postdoctoral Scientist, Smooth Muscle Cell Signaling

Koen Raedschelders, PhD, received his doctorate in pharmacology from the University of British Columbia under the supervision of David Chen, PhD, and David Ansely, MD. He spent two years as a postdoctoral scientist at Johns Hopkins University before moving to Cedars-Sinai. His research involves glycobiology and proteomics of vascular cell signaling within the context of aortic aneurysm formation.

Daniel Soetkamp, PhD
Postdoctoral Scientist, Proteomic Signatures of Cardiovascular Regeneration

Daniel Soetkamp, PhD, received his doctorate in biology at the Justus-Liebig University of Giessen under the supervision of Rainer Schulz, MD, PhD. He started his postdoctoral fellowship at Cedars-Sinai in November 2014. His research is focused on proteomic analysis investigating the process of heart regeneration, the role of mitochondria in cardioprotection, and automated sample preparation with the goal of identifying biomarkers of cardiovascular disease risk in women.

Andrea Matlock, PhD
Postdoctoral Scientist, Proteomic Analyses of Motor Neuron Diseases

Andrea Matlock, PhD, maintains a steadfast interest in mass spectrometry-based proteomics, which led her to the University of Virginia to earn a doctorate within the laboratory of Donald Hunt, PhD. At Cedars-Sinai, she is using mass spectrometry to detect global proteomic and protein modifications in multiple motor neuron diseases by analyzing patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells and motor neuron cultures to decipher alterations in signaling pathways that can be used in patients and cell-based screening assay. Data-dependent and independent mass spectrometry methodologies are applied to these studies.

Irene van den Broek, PhD
Postdoctoral Scientist, Clinical Proteomics and High-Throughput Biomarker Analysis

Irene van den Broek, PhD, is trained in pharmacy and toxicology, with a main expertise in the development and validation of quantitative mass spectrometry assays for peptide and protein biomarkers. She received her doctorate in 2010 at the Utrecht University in the Netherlands. After more than two years of professional cycling, she continued her scientific career as a postdoctoral researcher in a clinical chemistry laboratory at the Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands. Her main research focus is to directly impact patient care by supporting the introduction of high quality, state-of-the-art measurements of protein biomarkers in routine clinical laboratories. She joined the Van Eyk Laboratory in September 2015 to evaluate the clinical applicability of enabling proteomics technologies, such as highly multiplexed protein assays and remote biomarker monitoring using the Mitra microsampling device.

Shenyan Zhang, PhD
Postdoctoral Scientist, Clinical Proteomics and High-Throughput Biomarker Analysis

Shenyan Zhang, PhD, received her doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biology at Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, under the supervision of Siqi Liu, PhD. She started her postdoctoral fellowship at Cedars-Sinai in March 2015. Her research focuses on developing high-throughput mass spectrometry analysis methods for clinical samples, intact protein analysis and clinical proteomics.

Rakhi Pandey, MSc
Research Associate II, Cardiovascular Proteomics

Rakhi Pandey received her master’s degree from the University of British Columbia, Canada, in the department of pharmaceutical sciences, working on a mucoadhesive drug delivery strategy for bladder cancer. She joined the Van Eyk Laboratory and the Advanced Clinical Biosystems Research Institute in August 2015. Pandey designs, conducts and analyzes experiments centered on disease-induced protein modifications including citrullination and phosphorylation upstream of mass spectrometry analysis.

Weston Spivia, MSc
Research Associate II, Protein and Small Molecule Quantification

Weston Spivia received his master’s degree in biology at California State University, Long Beach, under the supervision of Deborah A. Fraser, PhD. During this time, he studied the anti-inflammatory, non-complement associated roles of complement protein C1q in relation to atherosclerosis. Spivia joined the Van Eyk Lab in 2015 and worked closely with Dawn Chen, PhD. His research focus is on quantitative protein and small molecule multiple reaction monitoring assay development, as well as data dependent acquisition in discovery proteomics.

Victoria Dardov
Proteomic Analysis in Neurodegenerative Disorders

Victoria Dardov is currently a doctoral candidate. In 2011, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physiology and neuroscience from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). During her undergraduate studies, she was a student researcher at the UCSD Moores Cancer Center and later obtained an internship at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. After graduation, Dardov worked as a research associate at Vertex and developed medicinal chemistry assays for the Huntington's team and oversaw automated production of human bronchial epithelial cultures for the cystic fibrosis program. She transitioned to the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation and joined the Advanced Automation Technologies team, operating an ultra-high-throughput automated assay platform for drug discovery. In 2014, she joined the Cedars-Sinai PhD program. The following year, she joined two research laboratories for a co-mentoring, collaborative project with Clive Svendsen, PhD, and Jennifer Van Eyk, PhD. Dardov’s doctorate research focuses on proteomic and post-translational modification changes in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and uses induced pluripotent stem cell derived ALS models.

Aaron Robinson
Proteomic Modifications in Liver Disease

Aaron Robinson is a doctoral candidate in the Biomedical Sciences and Transitional Medicine program at Cedars-Sinai. He completed his undergraduate education in biotechnology and technology management at University of California, Davis, in 2009. Robinson joined the Van Eyk Lab in 2014. His thesis project uses novel mass spectrometry techniques to detect and analyze protein methylation in non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.

Katia Semerciyan
Research Operations Associate

Katia Semerciyan received her bachelor of science from Emerson College. She is working toward her master's degree in public health, with a concentration in global health leadership at the University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine. Her expected graduation is summer 2017. Semerciyan began working in the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in 2014 supporting the chief of cardiology. She has been working with Jennifer Van Eyk, PhD since 2017.

Research Administrative Coordinator Wingfield
Research Administrative Coordinator

Contact the Van Eyk Lab

127 S. San Vicente Blvd.
Pavilion, 9th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90048