Finno Laboratory

Welsey Leigh (Lab Manager)

As an undergraduate, Wesley majored in Neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania. Thereafter, he attended graduate school under Dr. Kenton Sanders and Dr. Salah Baker to investigate the role of the interstitial cells of Cajal (ICC)in colonic and gastric motility. He has extensive experience with in-situ and in-vivo 2-photon Ca2+ transient imaging, colonic contractile recording, electrophysiological experiments, qPCR, and many molecular biology techniques. After graduate school, Wesley worked as a Lab Manager for two labs at UC Davis that investigate the Gut-Brain Axis and Neuro-Immune circuits. He recently joined the Finno Laboratory as a Lab Manager and is excited to work on the role of Vitamin E in Neurodegeneration. 

Dr. Tomasz Szmatoła
Dr. Szmatoła is a bioinformatician from the Center for Experimental and Innovative Medicine of the University of Agriculture in Kraków and the National Research Institute of Animal Production. He recently received a Fulbright Senior scholarship to work at UC Davis. He specializes in the analysis of data related to Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), mainly associated with animal genomics, transcriptomics or epigenetics. In particular, he is interested in the possibility of combining omics datasets, looking for relationships between them and holistically examining particular problems. His scientific interests include the search for polymorphic variants associated with genetic diseases in animals, hence his interest in the subject of juvenile idiopathic epilepsy in Arabian horses. In addition, he is fascinated by learning new programming languages, searching for better data analysis solutions or simply graphical presentation of the results thanks to the use of newer and better R package libraries.

Dr. Stephanie Ryan (Ph.D. Student)
Dr. Ryan received her Bachelors of Science in Genetics from UC Davis. She continued her education at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine with a focus on mixed species. Currently, she is a Ph.D. student in the Integrative Pathobiology graduate group, and is a Comparative Oncology T32 Trainee.  Her research focuses on the role of vitamin E status in the development and severity of cisplatin induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), a side effect of platinum-based chemotherapeutics which can lead to permanent gait abnormalities and pain.  She is also exploring genetic variants found in horses with equine neuroaxonal dystrophy, with the goal of uncovering the genetic basis for the disease.

Harrison Heath (Research Data Analyst) 
Harrison earned his Bachelor's Degree in Biotechnology from UC Davis. During his undergraduate career, he was an undergraduate researcher with the Finno Laboratory, where he focused on bioinformatics. He is now a Research Data Analyst, primarily studying the effects of splice site and intergenic variants using whole genome sequencing and transcriptomics. His goal is to contribute to our understanding and annotation of the horse genome. Additionally, Harrison is involved in other projects in the lab as a data analyst and curator.