Research Faculty & Staff

Jianye Ge received his BS and MS degrees in Computer Science from Nankai University, China. He earned his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from the University of Cincinnati and then worked as Assistant Professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center. He also worked for the Human Identification Division (HID) for Thermo Fisher Scientific as algorithm leader and later as Global Market Development Manager. His research relates primarily to computational analysis and interpretation of DNA forensic data. The software programs he developed have been used by the Federal and State government agencies to assist in solving criminal cases.

Dawn Moore Boswell,

Director of Legal Forensics & Training, UNT Center for Human Identification

 

 

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Dr. August Woerner’s research interests are generally in the areas of computation and population genetics, with a focus in forensics, bioinformatics, and machine learning. August’s current research projects run the gamut including, streamlining bioinformatics pipelines—making them faster and more user friendly—, machine learning and statistical approaches to processing and calling MPS data, application of genetic genealogy in the identification of missing persons,  investigating the feasibility of proteomics in forensic genetics, and inference problems in population genetics and genomics.

Jennifer Churchill Cihlar,

Assistant Professor

 

Jennifer Churchill is currently a Assistant Professor at UNT Health Science Center’s Center for Human Identification. Jennifer received her Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from Texas A&M University. Her undergraduate research at Texas A&M involved the application of molecular genetic technologies to the study of population and conservation genetics of the North American bison. Jennifer earned her Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences specializing in Human and Molecular Genetics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Her dissertation work focused predominantly on the use of linkage and next-generation sequencing technologies to identify novel autosomal dominant Retinitis Pigmentosa genes. Jennifer currently works with Dr. Bruce Budowle’s group at UNTHSC’s Center for Human Identification. Her research focuses on the development and application of human identification genetic marker analyses with massively parallel sequencing technologies including the validation and implementation of MPS for mitochondrial DNA analysis into UNTHSC Center for Human Identification’s Missing Persons Unit and Forensic Unit.

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Magdalena received her Ph.D. in Poland. During her Ph.D. study, she worked with DNA collected non-invasively in the field and wild animals’ population genetic data. She is experienced in analyses of a limited quantity and severely degraded DNA from human and animal samples collected non-invasively in the field, from museum specimens, at crime scenes, or historical excavation sites. During her postdoctoral research at Uppsala University in Sweden, she was focused on the analysis of DNA from forensic and historical samples. The main objective of her research was to develop highly sensitive assays for analyses of challenging samples (e.g., human skeletal remains from a Swedish warship that has been in seawater for over 300 years, or ancient samples from excavations of Viking-age graves). Magdalena has substantial expertise in developing and optimizing sensitive techniques for low copy number DNA analyses such as Sanger sequencing, Pyrosequencing, and Massively Parallel Sequencing. She graduated from a postgraduate course Substantive and Procedural Criminal Law at Jagiellonian University. Currently, she is focused on the population genetics and massively parallel sequencing data analyses. She is interested in history and criminal law. Her free time she spends with her family and friends. She is the project lead, validation and training manager on a U.S. Department of State grant sponsored by the INL Bureau. The project’s purpose is to combat human trafficking in Central America through the use of forensics. Magdalena is also a part of the UNTCHI team addressing human trafficking in the state of Texas.

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Angela earned a PhD in molecular genetics from Macquarie University in 1986. She has a lengthy research career in the areas of molecular biology and genetics and has conducted research at a variety of academic institutions including three years at Washington University in St. Louis and two years at the Rockefeller University in New York.
Angela was Assistant Chief Scientist in Biology at the South Australian Forensic Science Centre from 1991-1998, where she established some of the fundamental molecular biology methodologies which are still used today by forensic laboratories worldwide. She was the first person in Australia to provide expert courtroom testimony on the PCR DNA typing methodology, thus pioneering forensic genetics in Australia.
Angela was integral in formulating the quality standards for DNA testing for forensic laboratories incorporated into the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) accreditation requirements of Australia and was an accredited laboratory inspector for both NATA and the US-based forensic accreditation body, ASCLD-LAB.
From 1999 to 2005 she was employed at Queensland University of Technology as Project Leader in the Co-operative Research Centre for Diagnostics. She was Professor of Forensic Science at Bond University from 2005 through 2012. In her position at Bond University she developed Bachelor and Masters of Forensic Science degree programs and conducted research in the area of improved DNA applications for forensic science. Since 2012 she has been a consultant reviewing forensic casework for quality and interpretation issues.
Angela’s research career spans 30 years and includes Drosophila, marsupial and human genetics and molecular biology. She has researched projects on medical diagnostic techniques, the genetic basis of complex human diseases such as schizophrenia and craniosynostosis. She also has extensive research capabilities in the area or forensic genetics, having researched the genetic basis of human physical appearance (pigmentation, face shape and features and height), improved methods for low template DNA samples and enhanced recovery and DNA analysis of degraded DNA samples.

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Jonathan King is originally from North Carolina but has lived in Texas long enough to be considered a naturalized Texan. He received his MS from Tarleton State University in 2009 with a research focus in capturing novel polymorphic InDels from agricultural pathogens. He has been the laboratory manager for the research and development lab since March 2011.  Jonathan currently serves on the ISFG-recognized scientific working group (STRAND) and the editorial board of Forensic Science International: Reports. His current research projects include bioinformatic software development, massively parallel sequencing, small amplicon markers, mitochondrial sequencing, microbial forensics, and molecular medicine, just to name a few. When he is not working, Jonathan enjoys photography, gardening, and the culinary arts.

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Sammed Mandape,

Bioinformatician

 

Sammed is from Kolhapur, a city that resides along mountain ranges in western India. He has an undergraduate degree in Biotechnology. He then graduated with a Master of Science degree in Bioinformatics from Indiana University Indianapolis in 2014. His research interests are focused on designing and implementing analytics pipeline for high-throughput data, developing methods for integrating data from a range of sources, and building tools. He likes to spend his leisure time with his pets or reading books or learning new programming language.

 

Xuewen Wang received his Ph.D in Molecular Genetics from King’s College London, University of London, United Kingdom, and obtained his Master and bachelor degree from College of Life Science at Peking University, China. He then conducted postdoc research in University of Georgia. He worked as a leading scientist and leader of China Tobacco Gene Center for National Tobacco Genome Project, and a principle investigator in Chinese Academy of Science, and later worked at an adjunct position of University of Georgia and US Department of Agriculture for Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Service. He joins the center of human identification at UNTHSC in 2021.Dr. Wang’s research focuses on bioinformatics and genomics at large data scale with high performance computing facilities. He has rich experiences in next generation (2nd e.g. Illumina and 3rd, e.g. PacBio) sequencing (NGS) data analysis, especially for genome assembly, graph pan-genome, variants discovery, sequence comparison, population or single cell genomics, gene-trait associate, and integrated omics analysis of transcriptomes and metabolomes. He also developed many bioinformatic pipelines and several novel bioinformatic software, e.g. GMATA, to facilitate NGS data analysis and applied genomics. He published more than 50 high impact research articles at Nature Biotech and Nature Communications ect., and his articles were cited worldwide. He serves as an active reviewer and editor of more than 50 peer-reviewed academic journals. He is currently working on projects that apply state-of-art technologies in bioinformatics and genomics to develop novel software and technology, to advance the research and service in human DNA identification with high-throughput sequencing, and to solve challenging problems in forensic science.

Meng Huang is a Quantitative Genetics Scientist with experience in the research fields of human genetics, animal breeding, and plant breeding. His research interests focus on the development of novel statistical analysis software, parallel computing, and big dataset analysis.

Benjamin Crysup obtained his BS degrees in chemical engineering and computer science (UT). He then followed them up with a Ph.D. in scientific computation (at Florida State) by doing methods development to speed up molecular dynamics simulations. Being a computational chemist might make him the odd man out in the lab, but a collection of interesting computational questions both draws his interest and leverages his talents.

When he’s not coding, he’s writing (check out my book), running, making mead/melomel or working on one of his many side projects.

Dr. Muyi Liu received his bachelor’s degree from Computer Science Department at Tsinghua University, China. He graduated from both Biological Sciences Department and Computer Science Department, at Purdue University, with Ph.D. and M.S. degrees, with a further two years of postdoctoral research training in the school of Medicine, at Indiana University.
He has more than five years of experience in Single Cell Genomics, including RNA-Seq, ATAC-Seq, Spatial, genomics alignments, annotations, and gene differential expression analysis. He is also an expert on graph mining FSM, clustering Algorithms, and NP problem reductions to Modern SAT solvers.

 

Melissa is originally from Austin, TX and received her Bachelors in Biology from Texas Tech University. She has no free time, due to her two children, but has an extensive knowledge of My Little Pony trivia.

Amy Smuts,

Research Associate