People | cellular metabolic adaptation

Lab People

Naama Kanarek Ph.D.

P.I.

Naama completed her Ph.D. in Jerusalem, Israel in the Ben-Neriah Lab, and her postdoctoral training in the Whitehead Institute, MIT, in the Sabatini Lab.

Naama is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. and in the Pathology Department of Boston Children’s Hospital.

Naama’s passion for cellular adaptation to the changing metabolic environment led her to establish the research direction of the lab around cells that face changes in their environment - either because they moved, or due to a nutritional shift.

Naama is also a hiker and loves everything that is outdoors as long as the temp is reasonable (and her definition of reasonable is not your average New-Englander's definition). If it was up to her, she would go to a different place around the world every month.

naama.kanarek at childrens.harvard.edu

Michal Weitman
Ph.D.

Staff Scientist

Michal earned her PhD in Organic-Medicinal Chemistry from Bar-Ilan University, Israel, where she focused on developing novel therapeutic agents. She later pursued postdoctoral training in Computational Chemistry, studying enzyme catalysis through multiscale modeling.

For over a decade, Michal was the Director of the Mass Spectrometry Lab at Bar-Ilan University, providing advanced analytical support for diverse research projects across multiple disciplines.

In the Kanarek lab, Michal is a Staff Scientist, leveraging her expertise in analytical and organic chemistry within a metabolomics framework. Her research explores the biochemical underpinnings of disease, with a particular emphasis on identifying novel molecular entities in cancer biology.

Outside of work, Michal enjoys cooking, reading, hiking, exploring new places with her family and spending time with friends.

michal.weitman at childrens.harvard.edu

Alan Wong

B.Sc.

Alan is currently a student in the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD program at Harvard Medical School. He completed his undergraduate degree in Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology at Harvard College, where he studied axolotl limb regeneration in the lab of Jessica Whited. In studying the proliferative signals required for regeneration, he became interested in trying to understand how cancer cells adapt their metabolism to different nutrient environments. Outside of research, he enjoys cooking, going for long runs, and consuming all kinds of science fiction.

alan.wong at childrens.harvard.edu

M.D.-Ph.D. candidate

CIHR Awardee

PhRMA Foundation Fellow

Peng Wang
Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow

Croucher Fellow

Peng completed his PhD in Hong Kong, in the lab of Dr. David K. Banfield studying membrane trafficking, where he developed his passion for glycosylation, metabolism, and the well-being of humankind.
Peng is a postdoc in the Kanarek Lab funded by the Croucher Fellowship. Peng's focus is on how folate metabolism affects the function of T cells, with a specific interest from the glycosylation prospective.
In his spare time, Peng practices the skills of mindfulness - being aware and fully awake - via meditation and cooking everyday. One of his lifelong goals is to develop approaches to study how mindfulness practices change one’s metabolism both in the short and long terms.

peng.wang at childrens.harvard.edu

Amy Yu

Amy is currently a PhD student in the Harvard Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) program. She completed her undergraduate degree in Human Biology at UC San Diego and subsequently worked at UC San Francisco as a research associate, where her experience in gut microbiome and liver fibrosis research developed her general interest in cell metabolism’s integral role in disease development. In her free time, she loves baking, running, and reading comics.

amy.yu at childrens.harvard.edu

Ph.D. candidate

NSF GRFP 2023 Fellow

Landry Cancer Biology Consortium Honorary fellow

Nancy Pohl

Ph.D. candidate

FujiFilm Fellowship Awardee

NIH F31 Awardee

Nancy completed her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at Mount Holyoke College. As a research assistant in the lab of Keith Blackwell at the Joslin Diabetes Center, she became interested in the molecular mechanisms driving metabolic disease. She is currently a student in the Biological Sciences in Public Health (BPH) PhD program at Harvard School of Public Health, doing her thesis work in the Kanarek Lab. Outside of research, Nancy enjoys catching up with family, reading fantasy novels, and all kinds of outdoor adventure near and far.

nancy.pohl at childrens.harvard.edu

Baran Bulut

Baran is a medical student at Demiroglu Bilim University in Istanbul, Turkey, where he studies on a full scholarship. He is broadly interested in cancer biology, pathology, and metabolism, and hopes to pursue a career as a physician-scientist. During his time in the Kanarek Lab, Baran will contribute to projects related to cancer metabolism. Outside of the lab, he is a licensed mixed martial arts (MMA) athlete and enjoys hiking, running, exploring new cities, and reading.

baran.bulut at childrens.harvard.edu

Visiting Scientist

Rodmehr Basidj

Rodmehr is an undergraduate student at Harvard College concentrating in Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science. He is interested in engineering medical devices and hopes to pursue a career in engineering. During his time at the Kanarek Lab, Rodmehr will assist in maintaining and operating the mass spectrometry devices in a breadth of metabolomics studies. Outside of the lab, Rodmehr enjoys writing, comedy, and traveling.

rbasidj at college.harvard.edu

Research Assistant

Arjun Garg

Lab Intern

Arjun is currently a high school student at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, VA. He is deeply involved in research at the intersection of computational biology and medicine, with a strong interest in genomic data analysis and cancer. He has worked on a range of projects, including using RNA-seq to investigate the upregulation of certain enzymes in breast cancer, and conducting a comparative analysis of conserved genomic regions across pangenomes to understand the persistence of highly conserved sequences. With aspirations to become a physician and wet-lab researcher, Arjun is particularly drawn to questions about how molecular changes shape disease progression, and how new technologies can help uncover them. Outside of research, he enjoys going on long runs, cooking and discovering new foods, traveling to new places, listening to music, and participating in Model United Nations.

arjungarghd at gmail.com

Previous members (and their next position after their Kanarek lab time)

Postdocs and up

Boryana Petrova, PhD. Staff Scientist and Harvard Medical Instructor => Group leader in the Medical University, Vienna, Austria

PhD students

Adam Maynard, PhD, PhD student, BBS program, Harvard Medical School. => Postdoc @ Claussnitzer lab, the Broad Institute

Research Assistants

Jeannette (Riley) Brook, RA => Medical School Student at UMass Medical School, Worcester., MA
Andrew Culhane, RA => PhD student at BU

Master students

Fiona Tilghman, Visiting Master student, master program in Biochemistry at the Julius-Maximilian-University in Würzburg, Spring 2025
Max Westermeier, Visiting Master student, master program in Biochemistry at the Julius-Maximilian-University in Würzburg, Fall 2024
Maeve de Souza. Visiting Master student, master program in Biochemistry at the Julius-Maximilian-University in Würzburg, Spring-Fall 2023
Pauline Doettling, Visiting Master student, master program in Biochemistry at the Julius-Maximilian-University in Würzburg. Spring-Fall 2023
Lea Hammer, Visiting Master student, master program in Biochemistry at the Julius-Maximilian-University in Würzburg. Spring-Fall 2023
Catherine Merz, Visiting Master student, master program in Biochemistry at the Julius-Maximilian-University in Würzburg. Winter 2022-2023
Annabel Mueller, Visiting Master student, master program in Biochemistry at the Julius-Maximilian-University in Würzburg. Winter 2022-2023
Margaret Zimmer Harvard Medical School M.Sc. Student => Data analyst for the Red Sox