Faculty and Staff
Bioinformatics Staff
The UMMC Molecular and Genomics Core Facility (MGCF) is under the direction of Michael R. Garrett, PhD, MBA (Director) and D. Ashley Robinson, PhD (Associate Director) and employs 4.5 FTE experienced staff in performing a variety of genomic methodologies. Consultation and genomic services are offered to all UMMC investigators as well as other institutions of higher learning across the state of Mississippi.
Lavanya Challagundla, PhD
Instructor, Cell and Molecular Biology
Dr. Challagundla leads a team of bioinformaticians and is involved in performing standard and custom bioinformatics analysis of large genomic datasets generated in the MGCF. She is experienced in multiple programming languages (R, Bash, Perl and Python), along with multiple analysis pipelines, including metagenomics, RNA sequencing, and data visualization of complex biological data.
Changhong Wen, MPH, MS
Bioinformatician
Changhong earned her MPH degree with an emphasis on Biostatistics and Epidemiology from the University of Southern Mississippi. She is currently a PhD student in the Biostatistics and Data Science Program at UMMC. Prior to joining UMMC, Changhong worked as a Biostatistician and Epidemiologist at the Mississippi State Department of Health. She further gained her experience with omics data analysis, such as metabolomics and scRNA-seq, at the Department of Physiology and Biophysics. Changhong is skilled with SAS, R, Python, Stata and SQL.
Ayushi Lal, MS
Bioinformatician I
Ayushi holds an MS in Bioinformatics from the Georgia Institute of Technology and provides bioinformatics support for a variety of research projects at UMMC. Her work involves transcriptomics, pathway analysis, and data visualization. She is proficient in Python, R and Bash scripting.
Vishnu Priya Nuthanapati, MS
Bioinformatician I
Vishnu Priya Nuthanapati holds a master's degree in bioinformatics from Northeastern University and contributes to the Bioinformatics Core at UMMC. She brings a strong interdisciplinary background that integrates computational analytics with molecular and omics-based biological research. Her work focuses on gene regulatory networks, transcriptomic profiling, and small RNA–mediated regulation. She develops efficient and reproducible analytical pipelines using Python, R and Bash to transform complex sequencing data into meaningful biological insights.
Taylor Fleming, Comptia A+, Network+, Security+, CySA+, CASP+
UNIX System Administrator
Taylor is responsible for administering our on-site High-Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC - Cypress), along with working hand in hand with our Bioinformatics team as they process through multiple projects. He is also experienced in Unix and Windows System Administration, as well as shell scripting.