Daniela is an integral member of the Franco lab and is in charge of  facilitating grant submission and management operations for the lab. She also contributes extensively to the broader research mission of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.  

Kamila is in charge of the day to day operations of the lab and handles tumor procurement and processing. She also leads the single cell genomics projects in the lab. Kamila obtained her B.S. in Molecular Biology from Loyola University Chicago. In her free time she enjoys training for powerlifting competitions, traveling, and finding new places to hike.  

Caitlin collaborates with various Franco lab team members to conduct experiments related to cancer endpoints such as proliferation and metastasis of cancer cells. She also assists with our CRISPR-related experiments. Caitlin obtained her bachelors degree from Coastal Carolina University and a Masters degree from NC State.

Mike obtained his PhD in Genetics at the University of Florida College of Medicine where he focused on mechanisms of epigenetic imprinting during mammalian development. In the Franco Lab, he is currently funded by an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship, and leads projects related to non-coding enhancer RNAs and their roles in gene regulation in cancer. 

Shen obtained his PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of South Carolina where he focused on mechanisms of homologous recombination. In the Franco Lab, he is using his expertise in genetic engineering to generate mutations in pioneer transcription factors, using CRISPR/Cas9 methodologies, to study their functions in cancer. In his spare time he enjoys hiking, jogging and watching thrilling movies. 

Rosemary obtained her PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from Florida Tech where she focused on the effects of chronic stress on gene expression. In the Franco lab, she is funded by the UNC Cancer Epigenetics Training Program and will be using the CRISPR toolkit to study gene expression in breast cancer.

Mike is a graduate student in the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Graduate Program.  He joined the Franco Lab in 2018 and is  working on computational methods to identify oncogenic enhancers throughout the cancer genome. In addition, he is interested in defining enhancer-target-gene relationships and the role of copy number alterations in non-coding regions of the genome. 

Matt is a graduate student in the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology graduate program. He joined the lab in 2020 and is working on single-cell genomics data analysis. He is specifically interested in statistical approaches to integrate single-cell RNA-seq data with single-cell ATAC-seq data in human tumors. 

Hyunsoo is an experienced computational biologist that leads data analysis and pipeline development for the Franco lab. He also helps curate the Franco lab datasets and serves as a collaborator for many projects.