Meet the Tewari Lab Team

As Dr. Tewari settles in to his new space at the University of Michigan, Tewari Lab 2.0 will be growing and expanding. Here are the incredible individuals that currently work in our lab.

Post-Doctoral and Research Fellows

The Tewari Lab is actively looking for new post-doctoral and research fellows.  Please reach out if you have an interest in: CAR-T biomarkers, non-invasive cancer monitoring, wearable sensor technology, and bioinformatics.

Graduate Students

Xiheng Ren

Xiheng is a Master's student in the Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics. He received his B.S. in Biology from the University of Florida in 2022. His research is now focusing on wearable device data analysis.

Jingxian Zhao

Jingxian graduated from Zhejiang University - the University of Edinburgh in the 2022 and is continuing her studies in bioinformatics as a Master's student in DCMB at the University of Michigan. Her work is about the exploration of CAR-T RNAseq data. 

Staff

Erin Sandford, Ph.D
Erin joined the lab in 2016.  She is a Research Lab Specialist in the Tewari Lab serving roles of lab manager and staff scientist. She received her B.S. in Animal Science from Michigan State University and her Ph.D. in Genetics from Iowa State University in 2011. Erin oversees our students and technicians, is in charge of specimen management, development of sample collection protocols, and assists post-docs and other staff in day-to-day lab tasks and experiments.  In her free time she enjoys being outside, playing games with family, and hanging out with her husband, their 2 cats, and 2 dogs.

Chandan Bhambhani, Ph.D.

Chandan joined the Tewari lab as a postdoctoral research fellow in 2019, changed to a staff position in 2021, and comes with varied experiences in academia and industry.  A former University of Michigan graduate, Chandan earned his Ph.D. from the Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology department, with research focused on transcriptional regulation of Wnt signaling targets.  He then worked at Thermo Fisher Scientific for 6 years, leading various recombinant anitbody development programs (ABfinity & Superclonals). Based on his interests in next-gen sequencing, molecular genetics and translational medicine, his research in the Tewari lab is focused on developing liquid biopsies with the key projects being:
  • Evaluating circulating tumor DNA for early detection during disease manifestation and recurrence, in the context of different cancers using circulating biomarkers like KRAS and HPV.
  • Addressing fundamental questions about properties of cell free DNA and circulating tumor DNA (size, degradation, fragmentation etc.) in biofluids, mainly plasma and urine.
Chandan also enjoys playing tennis, table tennis and chess. 

Kirk Herman

Kirk is a Clinical Research Project Manager for the Tewari Lab. He received his B.S. in Healthcare Administration from Eastern Michigan University in 2011. In 2015, Kirk joined the lab to work with study design and as liaison between study participants, physicians, and principal investigators.

Kirsten Tuck

Kirsten is a Clinical Subjects Coordinator in the Tewari Lab. She works with Annika by managing the sample collection process, particularly on our Lynch syndrome study. This study primarily focuses on stool collection for analysis. She joined the Tewari Lab in 2017.

Michelle Rozwadowski

Michelle joined the research team in October of 2019. She works as the data manager for Dr. Choi and Dr. Tewari. She received her B.S. in Neuroscience from Michigan State University in 2018, and has previous research experience in neuropharmacology and in human cognition. She hopes to one day go back to school to get a higher degree in the medical or research fields (or both). In her free time, Michelle enjoys being outdoors, playing the saxophone, and spending time with her husband, friends, family, and two cats.

Claudia Baryo

Claudia is a research lab technician who joined the lab in 2023. She graduated from Ferris State University with a bachelors in biochemistry. Claudia enjoys running and playing video games with her partner in her spare time.

Kelly Mayhew

Kelly is a recent graduate from the Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics Master's program in who is working jointly with both the Tewari lab and with Dr. Sung Choi's lab.  She joined the lab in 2022 and her research has focused on the data from different wearable devices employed by our research projects and generating code to help visualize sample collections.

Zhijian Yu

Zhijian is a recent graduate from the Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics Master's program in who is working jointly with both the Tewari lab and with Dr. Sung Choi's lab.  He joined the lab in 2023 and his research has focused on analyzing data from subjects undergoing CAR-T cell therapy.

Bridgette Robinson
Bridgette is the Administrative Assistant for the Tewari Lab who joined our group in 2019.  
Don't forget to check out the Tewari Lab Alumni!