Meet Our Fellows

Jalil Nasibli, MD
Jalil Nasibli was born and raised in Zaqatala, Azerbaijan. He earned his MD degree from Istanbul University, Istanbul School of Medicine in 2015 and completed his pathology residency at Temple University Hospital in June 2022. He then has done a year of Hematopahtology fellowship at Fox Cancer Center. Currently, he is focusing on his Transfusion Medicine fellowship. He is interested in apheresis, blood banking and laboratory management. Outside work, Jalil enjoys to spend time with his family, and to play soccer and basketball. He loves horses and horseback riding.

Hannah Brown, PhD
Hannah Brown was born in Baltimore, Maryland. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry and Political Science from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Purdue University. Hannah’s graduate research focused on the analysis of brain tumor biopsies using intraoperative mass spectrometry (MS)-based platforms for improved glioma diagnostics based on molecular features. In her spare time, Hannah enjoys sharing meals with friends and family, skiing, traveling, and spending quality time with her dog, Pebbles.

Yanchun Lin, PhD
Yanchun Lin was born and raised in Shantou, China. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Shaanxi Normal University and her PhD in Chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis. During her PhD, she used mass spectrometry to characterize the higher order structure of therapeutic antibodies to provide insights into the stability of antibodies under different stressed conditions. Yanchun stayed at WashU for her clinical chemistry fellowship training. Outside of work, she enjoys weightlifting, outdoor running, cooking, learning about cocktails, and exploring restaurants.

Jason Sina, MD
Jason Sina was born and raised in Tehran, Iran. He earned his MD degree from Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 2007 and completed residency training in anatomic and clinical pathology at Washington University in Saint Louis in June 2023. Currently, he is focusing on his cytopathology fellowship. Outside work, Jason loves spending time with his family and friends, cooking, baking, grilling and being outdoors. He also enjoys indoor soccer and his favorite position is staying back at the goal as a goalie!

Lea Bellomo, MD, FAAD
Lea was born and raised in New York. She earned a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry from the State University of New York at Geneseo. She then earned her medical degree from Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York, where she was awarded the Glasgow-Rubin Citation for Academic Achievement by the American Medical Women’s Association. Following medical school, she completed her residency in dermatology at Stony Brook University Hospital, where she served as chief resident. After graduating residency, she practiced general dermatology at a multispecialty private practice in New York for four years before deciding to further her education in dermatopathology and is elated to be this year’s dermatopathology fellow at Washington University. Outside of work, she enjoys spending time with family and friends and is excited to explore St. Louis.

Eleanor Castro, MD
Eleanor Castro was born and raised in Louisville, KY. She earned her MD degree from University of Louisville School of Medicine in 2019 and completed residency training in anatomic and clinical pathology at Washington University in St. Louis in June 2023. She is excited to be staying at Wash U for her gynecologic and breast pathology fellowship. Outside work, Eleanor loves spending time with her family and friends. She also enjoys baking, knitting, and being outdoors.

Ariel Wu, MD
Ariel Wu was born in Providence, Rhode Island and raised in Princeton, New Jersey. She spent 7 years in Philadelphia completing an accelerated BS/MD program, earning her bachelor’s degree in biology from Villanova University and her medical degree from Drexel University College of Medicine. A lifelong east-coaster, she grew to love St. Louis during her AP/CP residency training at WashU. Highlights of her time in residency include adopting a cat, getting engaged, and serving as a Chief Resident. She is excited to be staying at WashU as one of the Gynecologic and Breast Pathology fellows. Her greatest loves in life are family, food, and her cat Cloey. She also enjoys a good book, being outdoors, and traveling the world.

Shiva Jabbari, MD
Shiva Jabbari was born and raised in Tabriz, Iran. She received her MD from Urmia University of Medical Sciences. After graduation, she worked as a general practitioner for two and a half years. In 2017 she moved to the United States and started working as a research fellow in a basic science lab in Indiana University. She is perusing AP/CP residency at Washington University in St. Louis and plans to join the Head and Neck Pathology Fellowship Program here at Wash U. She enjoys her life in beautiful St. Louis and likes hanging out with friends and family, cooking, and dancing.

Karen Fang, MD
Karen was raised primarily in Newark, Delaware with occasional forays to Shanghai to see her grandparents. She completed a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Philosophy at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, then went to Cleveland, Ohio for medical school at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. She matched to the University of Washington in Seattle for a 4-year AP/CP Pathology Residency, graduating earlier this year. She is now delighted to be at the Washington University in St. Louis for a hematopathology fellowship, and has plans for a surgical pathology fellowship next year back at the University of Washington in Seattle. She hopes to end up finding a niche in academia someday, likely at the junction of engineering, informatics, machine learning, and hematopathology. In her personal life, she reads voraciously (mostly science fiction and fantasy), has taken up crochet and knitting, has a history with baking, and occasionally still dabbles in piano and dance, for which she is classically trained. She has been told recently that “console gaming” is looked down upon in the larger videogame community, but she loves it nonetheless. She adores cats and children.

G. Michael Upchurch, MD, PhD
G. Michael Upchurch attended Tulane University where he earned a BS in Cell & Molecular Biology and an MS in Human Genetics. He completed his medical education at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, where he pursued a PhD in Cancer Biology in the laboratory of Dr. Rene Opavsky as part of the UNMC MD/PhD program. His work focused on epigenetic alterations in hematologic malignancies; specifically, how DNA hypomethylation contributes to the development and maintenance of hematologic neoplasms. This work demonstrated that DNMT3A is a haploinsufficient tumor suppressor in murine models of peripheral T-cell lymphoma. After finishing residency, he will stay at Washington University in St. Louis to pursue a hematopathology fellowship. In his spare time, he likes to rock out to 80’s hair metal, sample craft beer, tell endless “Dad Jokes”, and bro-down to a football game.

Manli Shen, PhD, CHS (ACHI)
Manli was born and raised in Wuhan, China. She completed medical education in Tongji Medical School and worked four years in the Pediatric Surgery Department in Wuhan Children’s Hospital before going back to Tongji Medical School for graduate education. After earned her PhD in molecular biology, she immigrated to the US to conduct postdoctoral research at Baylor College of Medicine and MD. Anderson Cancer Center on RNA splicing and human diseases. In 2014, she joined the HLA lab in the University of Kentucky as a clinical laboratory scientist. Manli started her HLA director-in-training in 2022. Manli loves to travel and spend time with her family.

Reza Ghasemi, PhD
Born and raised in Kazeroon, southern Iran, Reza completed his BS in General Biology at Shiraz University (2003), MS in Human Genetics at Tehran University of Medical Sciences (2007), and PhD in Oncology and Molecular Pathology at Universita G. d’Annunzio of Italy (2013). He moved to WashU to do his first postdoc in tumor immunology (2014-2016 in the Department of Surgery) and second postdoc in cancer genetics and genomics (2016-2019 in the Department of Internal Medicine – Oncology). He then worked as a staff scientist from 2019 to 2022 in the laboratory of Dr. David H. Spencer. He entered the LGG fellowship program in July 2022.

Hamed Rahi, PhD
Hamed Rahi grew up in Kermanshah, a city in western Iran. He received his bachelor’s degree in Biology at the University of Minnesota before earning his Ph.D. in Human Genetics at Howard University. His research focused on the epigenetics of colorectal carcinoma. After his graduate studies, Hamed completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Biomarker Discovery Laboratory in the Mayo Clinic, where he used next-generation sequencing data to study DNA alterations in prostate cancer patients. He then worked in various clinical cytogenetics laboratories for several years before becoming a fellow in Laboratory Genetics and Genomics at Washington University in St. Louis. In his spare time, he enjoys traveling, cooking, watching movies, and spending time with family and friends.

Krithika Shenoy, MBBS
Krithika was born and raised in India and graduated with an MBBS degree from Kasturba Medical College in Mangalore, India. She has worked on several translational research projects during medical school has been a recipient of two Indian Council of Medical Research, Short Term Studentship awards. After graduation, Krithika worked as a pathology teaching assistant for medical students at her alma mater before starting her Anatomic and Clinical Pathology residency at Washington University in St. Louis where she served as one of the Anatomic Pathology Chief Residents. She is very excited to start her fellowship in Gastrointestinal and Liver Pathology at Washington University in St. Louis and will be staying back for another year to complete a fellowship in Molecular Pathology. Outside of work, she loves cooking, painting and spending time with friends and family.

Amanda Wong, MD, PhD
Amanda Wong grew up in Minnesota in a suburb of the Twin Cities. She completed her undergraduate studies in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. After college, she worked at the National Institutes of Health in the lab of Dr. Paul Plotz studying the role of autophagy in the lysosomal storage disorder Pompe disease. She returned to the Midwest to complete her MD/PhD training at the University of Michigan. Her thesis work, conducted under the mentorship of Drs. Joel Swanson and Michele Swanson, investigated a novel mechanism (termed inducible renitence) by which activated macrophages respond to lysosome-damaging insults. Amanda completed her Anatomic Pathology residency training in 2023 at Barnes Jewish Hospital/Washington University in St. Louis. She is currently one of this year’s GI/Liver Pathology Clinical Fellows. She is a member of the Physician Scientist Training Program. After fellowship, she will join Dr. Kodi Ravichandran’s laboratory as a post-doctoral research fellow. In her free time, she enjoys reading, taking walks in St. Louis’s numerous beautiful parks, visiting the farmer’s market, and enjoying her finds of fresh produce in meals with friends and family.

Rachel Bosserman, PhD
Rachel grew up Thorntown, Indiana and received a BS in Biochemistry from Purdue University.  She then completed her doctoral studies in Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame where her research focused on protein secretion in pathogenic Mycobacteria.  After completing her PhD, she conducted research on E. coli at UTHealth McGovern Medical School in Houston, Texas.  She then moved to St. Louis where she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Washington University School of Medicine.  Rachel is currently a medical and public health microbiology fellow at Washington University School of Medicine.  She is passionate about microbiology and has particular interests in antimicrobial resistance, mycobacteria, and molecular diagnostics.  Outside of work, Rachel enjoys spending time with her family, traveling, and gardening.

Michaela Eickhoff, PhD
Michaela Eickhoff is from Oakwood, Illinois, and she earned her bachelor’s degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For her graduate studies, she attended Princeton University where she conducted research in the laboratory of Dr. Bonnie Bassler studying quorum sensing, a process of cell-to-cell communication in bacteria. After earning her PhD in Molecular Biology, she completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship with the New Jersey Department of Health in the state public health laboratory. Michaela is currently a medical and public health microbiology fellow with interests in molecular diagnostics, antimicrobial resistance, and public health microbiology. In her free time, Michaela enjoys hiking, seeing musicals, and spending time with her family.

A. Alnoor, MD
Alnoor was born and raised in Karachi, a port city in the province of Sindh, Pakistan. He completed his medical education at the Jinnah Medical and Dental College, University of Karachi, Pakistan, followed by a clinical internship at the Aga Khan University (AKU) in Karachi, Pakistan. Post-internship, Dr. Alnoor worked as a post-doc in the division of the molecular pathology of the department of pathology and laboratory medicine at the AKU on several WHO-funded research projects including developing non-invasive and rapid molecular testing modalities for pediatric tuberculosis patients and genetic characterization of treatment-resistant tuberculosis strains. Dr. Alnoor completed his AP/CP residence from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, followed by a hematopathology fellowship at ARUP Laboratories in Salt Lake City, Utah. His other academic interests are digital pathology, machine learning, and informatics. Outside of work, he likes exploring national parks, trying new cuisines, hiking, and playing chess.

Christopher Zarbock, MD
Chris hails from Wisconsin where he spent many of his formative years. He earned a biomedical engineering degree from Dartmouth College and a Bachelor of Engineering degree from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. He earned his MD from the University of Wisconsin Madison School of Medicine and Public Health and completed a clinical pathology residency at the University of Minnesota Medical School. He is excited to now complete fellowship training in both molecular genetic pathology and clinical informatics – two areas of immense interest to him. Outside of work he likes to tinker with programming and electronics, play board games and computer games, and spend time with his wife and their cats.

Kaleigh Roberts, MD, PhD
Kaleigh was born and raised in St. Louis, MO. She attended University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she majored in Bioengineering with a minor in Chemistry. After undergrad, she spent a year doing research on amyloid-beta efflux from the brain in the Bateman Lab at WashU. For medical school she attended Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, where she was a member of the MSTP. For her PhD, she worked with Tom Meade studying cobalt-based inhibitors of amyloid aggregation and toxicity. Following med school, she matched at WashU for combined AP/NP/PSTP training. After completing her Anatomic Pathology residency, she is now the Clinical Neuropathology Fellow. She plans to rejoin Bateman Lab after fellowship and continue with Alzheimer’s disease-related research. She lives with her husband Steve and daughter Lily. Her hobbies include pets (2 dogs, 2 cats, 3 snakes, 1 lizard), swimming, boating, and board games.

Emilie (Mimi) Russler-Germain, MD, PhD
Emilie was born and raised in New York City. She completed her BS in biology with honors in neuroscience at Stanford University. After college, she moved to St. Louis, MO and spent two years studying axon degeneration in the lab of Aaron DiAntonio at Washington University. She subsequently entered the Washington University Medical Scientist Training Program, where she earned her MD and PhD in immunology studying dendritic cell induction of T cell differentiation to gut commensal organisms in the lab of Chyi-Song Hsieh. Emilie is the first year clinical neuropathology fellow and also part of the Physician Scientist Training Program. She is interested in nervous system autoimmune processes as well as CNS tumor immunology. She spends most of her spare time with her wonderful family.

Kayla Hoerschgen, MD
Kayla was born and raised in central Missouri. She completed her BS in investigative and medical sciences and forensic science from Saint Louis University. For medical school she attended Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. Following medical school, she completed a combined AP/CP residency at the University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She is now the Pediatric Pathology Fellow at Washington University School of Medicine. After this year she plans to attend the University of Nebraska Medical Center where she will complete a fellowship in Hematopathology. Outside of work, Kayla enjoys spending time outside, running, arts and crafts, and baking.

Abdullah Almajnooni, MD
Abdullah was born in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, where he completed medical school at Umm Al-Qura University. Before joining WUSTL, Abdullah completed his AP/CP training at RUSH University in Chicago. At work, he enjoys helping junior colleagues in the gross room or at the microscope. Abdullah spends most of his time outside work with his wife and children, exploring local restaurants. In addition, he is a big fan of soccer, hiking, and desert camping.