Miller Lab Staff

Katherine E. Miller, PhD
Principal Investigator
Katherine.Miller@NationwideChildrens.org

Katherine (Katie) Miller, PhD, is a principal investigator in the Institute for Genomic Medicine (IGM) at Nationwide Children’s and a research associate professor of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. Dr. Miller leads a research laboratory, alongside Dr. Mardis, with a focus on studying cancer genomics and the tumor immune microenvironment in pediatric solid tumors. She also serves as the director of the Genomic Services Laboratory.

Elaine Mardis, PhD
Principal Investigator
Elaine.Mardis@NationwideChildrens.org

Elaine Mardis, PhD, is co-executive director of the Steve and Cindy Rasmussen Institute for Genomic Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and holds the Rasmussen Nationwide Foundation Endowed Chair in Genomic Medicine. She also is a professor of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

Dr. Mardis is an internationally recognized expert in cancer genomics, with ongoing interests in the integrated characterization of cancer genomes, defining DNA-based somatic and germline interactions and RNA-based pathways, and immune microenvironments that lead to cancer onset and progression, specifically involving pediatric cancers. Most recently, her research has been oriented toward translational aspects of cancer genomics, specifically identifying how the cancer genome changes with treatment, including acquired resistance, the use of genomics in understanding immune therapy response, and the clinical benefit of cancer molecular profiling in the pediatric setting.

Corinne Strawser, PhD
Senior Bioinformatics Scientist
Corinne.Haines@NationwideChildrens.org

Corinne Strawser is a bioinformatics scientist whose research focuses on development and application of analytical pipelines for single-cell genomic and spatial transcriptomic studies of pediatric cancer and epilepsy. She is particularly interested in the tumor microenvironment and using genomic technologies to better understand cell-cell interactions. Corinne received her bachelor’s degree in Biology from Denison University and her doctorate degree in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from The Ohio State University. She did her postdoctoral training at Duke University where she developed her interest in single-cell genomics with a focus on the breast tumor microenvironment.

Elizabeth Garfinkle, PhD
Research Scientist
Elizabeth.Garfinkle@NationwideChildrens.org

Elizabeth Garfinkle is a postdoctoral scientist whose research focuses on the immunogenomics of leukemia and central nervous system tumors. Elizabeth earned a bachelor’s degree in Microbiology from California State University, Long Beach and a doctorate degree in Biomedical Sciences from The University of Tennessee Health Science Center. She completed her dissertation on the molecular characterization of pediatric acute megakaryoblastic leukemia at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Stanford University.

Adithe Rivaldi
Senior Research Associate
Adithe.Rivaldi@NationwideChildrens.org

Adithe is a research associate in the Miller Lab. He works on collaborative projects utilizing Single-Cell RNA-Sequencing and spatial transcriptomic technologies to understand various diseases. His recent research has also involved validation of low-level somatic mutations using deep-targeted sequencing, detection of mosaic chromosomal copy number gains in patients with epilepsy and aiding the optimization of personalized sequencing assays to detect minimal residual disease in CNS tumors. Adithe obtained his bachelor’s degree from The Ohio State University, where he studied Neuroscience and researched neural stem and progenitor cells. He is planning on attending graduate school in the future.

Lakshmi Prakruthi Rao Venkata
Genetic Technologist III
Lakshmi.Venkata@NationwideChildrens.org

Lakshmi Prakruthi Rao Venkata is a genetic technologist whose research focuses on gene expression studies in pediatric brain tumors. She has been instrumental in the clinical validation for pediatric brain tumor methylation profiling.

Lakshmi completed her master’s degree in Immunology at the University of Cincinnati in 2018 and is certified by the American Society for Clinical Pathology as a technologist in molecular biology.

Sophia Paxton
Research Student
Sophia.Paxton@NationwideChildrens.org

Sophie Paxton is a PhD candidate in OSU’s Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program, co-mentored by Elaine Mardis and Katie Miller. Her research focuses on single-cell and spatial profiling of oncolytic virus-treated malignant glioma, investigating factors that contribute to therapeutic response. She also applies her computational analysis expertise to support other immuno-oncology projects. Sophie earned a bachelor’s degree in bioengineering, with a concentration in cell & tissue and a minor in mathematics, from Northeastern University in 2023. She is passionate about using advanced genomic tools to better understand cancer and help develop more effective immunotherapies.

Maha Hussein
Research Student
Maha.Hussein@NationwideChildrens.org

Maha Yehia Hussein, MSc, is a PhD candidate in the Miller Lab, co-mentored by Elaine Mardis and Katie Miller. Maha’s dissertation research focuses on leveraging immunogenomics to investigate immune response mechanisms in vascular anomalies. This research aims to provide novel insights into characterizing the immune microenvironment of vascular anomalies and defining disease-associated antigens presented by cells harboring pathogenic driver mutations. Additionally, she works closely with the IGM clinical laboratory team to develop a high-sensitivity targeted sequencing approach for identifying somatic variants in challenging samples. Maha obtained her master's degree in genetic engineering and biotechnology from the University of Sadat City, Egypt. She completed her research training in the Department of Pathology at Children’s Cancer Hospital Egypt, where she developed a strong interest in cancer genomics and molecular diagnostics. Her master's thesis focused on identifying novel biomarkers associated with survival outcomes across molecular subtypes of medulloblastoma.

Grant Pachko
Research Intern
Grant.Pachko@NationwideChildrens.org

Grant Pachko is a research intern in the Miller Lab. His research focuses on the development of fragmentomics in liquid biopsies aimed at early cancer detection. He is comfortable both in the technical side of building libraries for sequencing and bioinformatical realm, advancing analysis in sequencing data. At The Ohio State University, Grant is completing a biochemistry degree in the honors program and eventually hopes to work as a physician in the world of academic medicine.

Ina Klasner
Research Student
Ina.Klasner@NationwideChildrens.org

Ina is a MD/PhD student at The Ohio State University College of Medicine mentored under Drs. Mardis and Miller. Her research brings together digital pathology, cancer genomics and the tumor microenvironment, in which she studies tertiary lymphoid structures in pediatric rhabdomyosarcoma. She is interested in developing computational tools to aid in their characterization on H&E whole slide images. Ina completed her bachelor’s degree at Michigan Technological University with a major in computational biology and applied mathematics. Ina aspires to become a physician-scientist after completion of her medical and graduate training.

Srestha Chattopadhyay
Research Intern
Srestha.Chattopadhyay@NationwideChildrens.org

Srestha Chattopadhyay is an undergraduate research student whose research focuses on cancer immunogenomics, tumor immune microenvironments and neoantigen-based immunotherapies. Her work involves applying computational genomic approaches to characterize immune responses in glioblastoma, vascular malformations and pediatric cancers. Srestha is a third-year biomedical engineering student at The Ohio State University, where she is a Stamps Eminence Scholar and Goldwater Scholar. She previously conducted research at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, studying T-cell responses following CAR-T cell therapy in pediatric leukemia. She hopes to pursue an MD-PhD and become a physician-scientist focused on developing more effective immunotherapies for pediatric cancers.