Principal Investigator
Dan Spakowicz
Principal Investigator
Dan joined the Medical Oncology and Biomedical Informatics faculty at Ohio State in April 2018. His lab studies how the microbiome shapes cancer biology, treatment response, and toxicity, bringing together human studies, experimental models, and computational analysis to identify microbial biomarkers and opportunities to improve patient outcomes.
Current Members
Postdoctoral researchers
Yogita Mehra
Postdoctoral Researcher with Laura Chambers
Yogita is a postdoctoral researcher who joined the lab in April 2023. She studies how microbial communities influence gynecologic cancers and their treatment, with a focus on the gut microbiome and immunotherapy response in cervical cancer. Her projects examine how altering these communities may change interactions between tumors, microbes, and the immune system.Mohamed Mohssen
Postdoctoral Researcher with Laura Chambers
Mohamed joined the lab as a postdoctoral researcher in April 2026. His research examines relationships between the gut microbiome, cancer recurrence, and treatment-related adverse events. Through the pre-platinum project, Mohamed contributes to understanding how microbial differences among patients relate to their experiences and outcomes during cancer treatment.Graduate students
Caroline Dravillas
Graduate student
Caroline is a graduate student who joined the lab in August 2020 and studied Computer Science and Public Health at Ohio State. She investigates how the microbiome changes during cancer treatment and how those changes relate to immunotherapy response and toxicity. Her projects also examine the microbiome in cervical cancer.Shiva Jahanbakhshi
FST PhD
Shiva is a doctoral student who joined the lab in July 2023. Shiva studies how dietary interventions, including berry supplements, alter the gut microbiome and influence cancer prevention and response to immunotherapy. This work connects studies of dietary supplementation in people at elevated lung cancer risk with experimental investigations of microbiome-mediated treatment effects.
Lynn Marcho
BSGP PhD with Sachin Jhawar
Lynn is a doctoral candidate in Biomedical Sciences who joined the lab in January 2025. She studies microbes within breast tumors and their relationships with the tumor microenvironment. Her projects include investigating tumor-associated bacteria and mapping where microbes occur within different breast cancer subtypes to better understand their interactions with surrounding tissue.
Elham Mirtaheri
OSUN PhD with Carolyn Presley
Ellie is a Ph.D. student in Nutritional Science and a graduate research assistant in the lab. She joined the lab in January 2025 and studies the effects of nutritional interventions and age-dependent microbiome–immune interactions on immune-related adverse events in lung cancer patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors.
Anna Petouhoff
BSGP PhD with Dwight Owen
Anna is a graduate student who joined the lab in January 2025. She studies relationships between the microbiome, cancer immunotherapy, and immune-related adverse events. Her work spans projects on treatment response and toxicity, including how aging may change the interactions between microbial communities and the immune system.Dipankor Dhrubo
BSGP PhD with David Carbone
Dipankor is a doctoral student who joined the lab in May 2025. Dipankor contributes to mechanistic treatment clustering, a digital-twin approach that groups patients in the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN) by similar treatment timelines. Additional projects investigate treatment resistance in MET-amplified lung cancer and the role of tumor-associated microbes in radiation response.Tanisha Mukherjee
Master's student with Patrick Bradley
Tanisha is a master’s student who joined the lab in August 2025. She works on cultivating gut microbes and developing culture methods that make microbial communities accessible for experimental study. Her research supports efforts to move from identifying microbes in sequencing data to growing them in the laboratory, where their biological roles and relationships with cancer can be investigated.Research staff
Lane Nevers
Research staff member
Lane is a research staff member who joined the lab in October 2022. She contributes to studies of how dietary interventions shape the gut microbiome and response to immunotherapy. Her work also includes cultivating gut microbes, supporting experimental studies that connect changes in microbial communities with their biological effects.Undergraduates
Jonah Bukovac
URAP Fellow
Jonah is an undergraduate researcher who joined the lab in July 2025. He contributes to KetoIO, a study of ketogenic dietary interventions during immunotherapy. His research focuses on the connections between diet, the gut microbiome, and treatment response within a clinical study evaluating the safety and feasibility of this nutritional approach.Ian Sander
Undergraduate Researcher
Ian is an undergraduate researcher who joined the lab in August 2025. Ian studies how tobacco and nicotine products affect oral microbial communities and how the oropharyngeal microbiome relates to cancer treatment response. These projects connect questions about environmental exposures with the potential role of oral microbes in cancer care.Raymond Nahhas
Undergraduate Researcher with Claire Han
Raymond is an undergraduate researcher who joined the lab in August 2025. He studies how social determinants of health and race relate to the gut microbiome and gastrointestinal toxicity during colorectal cancer treatment. His work examines these relationships in the context of understanding differences in patients’ treatment experiences.Bemnet Worku
Undergraduate Researcher with Laura Chambers
Bemnet is an undergraduate researcher who joined the lab in August 2025. Bemnet investigates whether microbes are present inside endometrial tumors and, if so, which organisms are present. The project also examines whether these tumor-associated microbes affect treatment outcomes, linking microbial characterization with clinically relevant questions.
Aspen Carson
Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Fellow
Aspen is an undergraduate researcher and pre-med biology major at Ohio State who joined the lab in September 2025. She studies tumor-infiltrating Candida albicans and its effects on radiation treatment. Her work examines how a fungus within the tumor environment may influence the way cancer responds to therapy.Cecilia Luo
Undergraduate Researcher with Willa Hsueh
Cecilia is an undergraduate researcher who joined the lab in September 2025. Cecilia studies how the microbiome interacts with neutrophils and inflammation in visceral adipose tissue in the context of obesity. This work investigates connections between microbial communities, immune-cell behavior, and inflammation in the tissue surrounding internal organs.Urav Patel
Undergraduate Volunteer
Urav is an undergraduate volunteer who joined the lab in November 2025. Urav contributes to studies of the sarcoma tumor microbiome, investigating microbes associated with these cancers. The broader project examines whether the tumor microbiome could offer therapeutic targets and new ways to understand interactions between microbes and cancer.Anania Haimanot
Undergraduate Researcher
Anania is an undergraduate researcher who joined the lab in June 2026. Anania studies how vitamin A relates to changes in the gut microbiome following hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The project follows microbial communities over time to examine the relationship between nutritional factors and the post-transplant microbiome.Kayden Susa
Undergraduate Researcher
Kayden is an undergraduate researcher who joined the lab in June 2026. Kayden contributes to studies of immune-related adverse events during cancer immunotherapy, focusing on how aging and the microbiome may influence treatment toxicity. These projects examine microbial and immune factors that could help explain differences in adverse events among patients.Liam O'Neil
Undergraduate Volunteer
Liam is an undergraduate volunteer who joined the lab in July 2026. Liam contributes to studies of nutritional interventions during immunotherapy and the relationships between aging, the microbiome, and immune-related adverse events. This work connects questions about diet and microbial communities with the effectiveness and tolerability of cancer treatment.Kennedy Perline
Undergraduate Volunteer
Kennedy is an undergraduate volunteer who joined the lab in July 2026. Kennedy studies how aging, the microbiome, and immune function interact in the development of immune-related adverse events during cancer immunotherapy. The project examines how these interactions may contribute to differences in treatment toxicity across age groups.Vivek Akella
Undergraduate Volunteer
Vivek is an undergraduate volunteer who joined the lab in August 2026. Vivek contributes to ARISE, which studies the vaginal microbiome in people receiving hormone therapy for breast cancer. The project examines whether microbial communities can serve as markers of vaginal health and help explain differences in treatment outcomes.High school students
Tharun Nambia
CREATES High School Fellow
Tharun joined the lab as a CREATES High School Fellow in June 2026. Tharun contributes to studies of microbes within endometrial tumors and their effects on treatment outcomes, as well as tumor-associated microbes and radiation response. Additional work involves mechanistic treatment clustering, which groups patients in real-world datasets by similar treatment timelines.Visiting fellows
Hiroshi Nishiwaki
Visiting Fellow with Sachin Jhawar
Hiroshi is a visiting fellow who joined the lab in August 2025. Hiroshi studies microbiome–host interactions across projects on the oral microbiome and cancer treatment, exercise and nutrition, obesity-associated inflammation, and immune-related adverse events. These collaborations connect microbial and immune processes across different clinical and experimental settings.Alumni
Graduate students
Rebecca Hoyd — Graduate student · ORCID 0000-0003-1210-4491
Karthik Chakravarthy — MD/PhD with Sachin Jhawar · ORCID 0000-0002-9064-690X
Julia Zalewski — Biostats Masters with Allison Quick
Research staff
Nyelia Williams — Research Associate · ORCID 0000-0002-3960-1976
Mitch Muniak — Research Assistant · ORCID 0000-0001-9919-1457
Amna Bibi — Research Assistant
YunZhou Liu — Data Analyst · ORCID 0000-0002-9892-2438
Alexander Loncar — staff · ORCID 0009-0000-8079-2092
Undergraduates
J.T Bassett — Undergraduate Researcher
Linda Antwi — Undergraduate Researcher
Mark Isom — Undergraduate Researcher
Andy Denny — Undergraduate Researcher
Malven Singh — Undergraduate Researcher
Janhavi Sahasrabudhe — Undergraduate Researcher
Isaac Arefi — Undergraduate Researcher · ORCID 0000-0001-7474-8909
Aadi Pallerla — Pelotonia Undergraduate Research Fellow
Alvin Anand — Undergraduate Researcher
Yangyang Liu — Pelotonia Undergraduate Research Fellow
Owen Snyder — Undergraduate Researcher
Mari Lynn — CREATES Undergraduate Fellow · ORCID 0000-0002-7038-2951
Louis Denko — Undergraduate Researcher · ORCID 0009-0001-5821-7873
Idara Ntukidem — Undergraduate Researcher
Matthew Drozda — Undergraduate Volunteer
Ridha Pandey — URAP Fellow
Jaqueline Hudak — Undergraduate Researcher
Kashvi Bagadia — Undergraduate Researcher with Sachin Jhawar · ORCID 0009-0008-0136-8452
High school students
Najma Afrah — CREATES High School Fellow
Justin A Suppogu — High School Student
Camille Croom — High School Student
Clinical fellows
- Julia Chalif — GynOnc Fellow with Laura Chambers · ORCID 0000-0002-2477-4858
Medical students
Bailey Conrad — Samuel J. Roessler Memorial Medical Student Research Scholar
Dennis Grencewicz — Samuel J. Roessler Memorial Medical Student Research Scholar, Carolyn Kuckein AOA Fellow · ORCID 0000-0002-6322-2853
Ahmed Hussein — Medical Student
Research fellows
Jaleea Gamble — ASPIRE Fellow
Naa Dromo Korley — CREATES Fellow with Liz Arthur
Carol Mensah-Bonsu — CREATES Fellow with Laura Chambers
Justin Simmons — CREATES Fellow
Jennifer Carmona Cardova — CREATES Fellow