Championing Excellence: Meet the Faces of Black in Biophysics
Executive Board
Whitney A. Stevens-Sostre, PhD
PRESIDENT
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Whitney A. Stevens-Sostre is the Founding President of the Black In Biophysics organization. She is an HHMI Hanna Gray Fellow and is currently a postdoc in Dr. Mrinalini Hoon’s lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studies how voltage-gated ion channels shape the light-stimulus responses, connectivity, and intrinsic excitability of retinal neurons using single-cell electrophysiology and high-resolution microscopy. Whitney completed her PhD training under the mentorship of Dr. Gail Roberton at UW-Madison, where she studied the roles of the hERG channel’s cytosolic domains in gating. She is an alumna of the NINDS D-SPAN F99/K00 Fellowship and is proud of her Puerto Rican and Afro-Latinx heritage.
Aarion Romany
TREASURER
PhD Candidate
Aarion is 5th year PhD candidate at the University of Maryland Baltimore School of Pharmacy. His research focuses on applying computational methods to accelerate covalent drug discovery targeting kinases. In addition to accelerating the design of biomaterial based on chitosan. Outside of research, he enjoys hiking, traveling, cooking and eating new foods.
Jhullian Alston, PhD
DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMMING & FUNDRAISING
Postdoctoral Fellow
Jhullian "J" Alston is a HHMI Hanna Gray Fellow and Burroughs Wellcome Fund PDEP postdoctoral fellow in the lab of TJ Ha at Boston Children's Hospital where he studies transcription factor fusion oncoproteins and their disordered activation domains using a combination of single-molecule techniques and computational biophysics. He did his PhD training under the mentorship of Andrea Soranno and Alex Holehouse at Washington University in St Louis where he also studied disordered proteins.
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Lisandra Flores Aldama, PhD
VICE PRESIDENT
Postdoctoral Fellow
Lisandra is a K99 postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Gail Robertson's laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studies the hERG1 channel's mechanisms of gating and biogenesis. In recognition of her research accomplishments, Lisandra recently received the 2024 Excelsior Award from the Society of General Physiologists. During her PhD studies, Lisandra trained under the supervision of Dr. Sebastian Brauchi at the Universidad Austral of Chile. As a result of her doctoral research, she established an evolutionary structure-function correlation of the fast inactivation mechanism of calcium selective TRPV5 and TRPV6 ion channels.
Cheyanne Lewis
DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS
PhD Candidate
Cheyanne Lewis is a 3rd Year Neurosciences PhD candidate at Stanford University in the lab of Dr. Julia Kaltschmidt. She is currently studying pain circuits in the spinal cord to better understand how neuropathic pain is encoded and transmitted to higher brain centers. She aims to classify an understudied class of interneurons and their role during pain and non-pain states. She is passionate about science communication and enjoys reading and science illustration.
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Kobby Van DyckSECRETARY
PhD Candidate
Kobby is a 5th year PhD candidate in the Biophysics program at the University of Notre Dame. He works in Dr. Katharine White’s lab where he uses computational and experimental approaches to study how intracellular pH dynamics regulate signaling proteins. Specifically, he aims to better understand the role of pH in allosterically regulating these proteins and how pH sensors have evolved to respond to transient changes in intracellular pH. Outside lab, Kobby spends most of his free time playing video games, reading, or making house music.
Keandreya Morrison
DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS
PhD Candidate
KeAndreya Morrison is a 4th year biomedical sciences Ph.D. Candidate at Meharry Medical College. Her research focuses on studying the relationship between host and pathogen through the lens of structural biology in the laboratory of Dr. Tina Iverson at Vanderbilt University. KeAndreya is a Georgia native and completed her Bachelor of Science degree in biology at Fort Valley State University in Fort Valley, GA. Outside of the lab, KeAndreya enjoys traveling, sewing, crocheting, and learning new hobbies.
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Advisory Board
Jamaine Davis, PhDDr. Davis is a biophysicist trained in X-ray crystallography. The focus of his lab is to understand the molecular basis for human diseases. His work is at the intersection of genetics of disease, health disparities and structural biology. A key project in his lab is to determine how genetic variants of the ATP-binding cassette protein ABCA7 confer risk for Alzheimer’s disease, particularly among African Americans who are at greatest risk.
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Theanne Griffith, PhD
Dr. Griffith is a neuroscientist. and received her undergraduate degree in neuroscience and Spanish from Smith College and earned her doctorate in neuroscience from Northwestern University. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of California Davis, where her lab investigates how our nervous system encodes bodily sensations such as temperature and pain.
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