Meet the Team
Leadership and lab management
Kiran Polavarapu
Kiran completed his PhD in 2019 at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in India. His PhD work involved developing next generation sequencing (NGS)-based tests for detection of both copy number variations and point mutations in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. He recently joined the Lochmüller Lab as a postdoctoral fellow.
Students
Ozge Aksel-Kilicarslan
Ozge is a PhD student in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Ottawa with a specialization in Human and Molecular Genetics.
Malaichamy Sivasankar
Malaichamy Sivasankar is a PhD student in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Ottawa.
Josh Zeldin
Josh is a Master’s student in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Ottawa.
Collaborations
Andreas Roos
Andreas Roos is Scientific Officer in the Department of Neuropediatrics of University Hospital Essen in Germany. Thanks to his longstanding collaboration with the Polavarapu Lab and Lochmüller Lab, he now holds an adjunct professorship at the University of Ottawa and is a visiting member of the lab.
Rachel Thompson
Rachel completed her PhD at Newcastle University in the UK, where she was involved in the coordination of the RD-Connect data sharing and analysis platform. She is a postdoctoral fellow in the Lochmüller Lab with a research interest in the use of data integration methods for medical genomics and precision medicine in neuromuscular diseases.
Hanns Lochmüller
Professor Hanns Lochmüller is a neurologist and clinical academic specializing in genetic neuromuscular disorders and rare disease. He is Senior Scientist at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) Research Institute and Professor of Neurology in the University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine and the Department of Medicine, Division of Neurology at The Ottawa Hospital.