The Lab

Ghunwa Nakouzi joined the HudsonAlpha Clinical Services Lab as remote associate director in 2018. Nakouzi received her PhD in Genetics from Case Western Reserve University in 2009. She completed her clinical fellowship training at University Hospitals-Cleveland Medical Center and is board certified in clinical molecular genetics and clinical biochemical genetics. Until recently, Nakouzi maintained her biochemical genetics experience by serving as assistant medical director of the Biochemical Genetics Lab at the Cleveland Clinic. Nakouzi has experience in both molecular and biochemical genetic clinical assay development and validation. Her dual-specialty empowers her with knowledge in a wide array of genetic disorders and with the ability to correlate results from molecular and biochemical tests to reach more accurate diagnoses for patients.

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Brett Sundlof is clinical lab supervisor of the HudsonAlpha Clinical Services Lab. Brett previously worked at Sequenom as supervisor of sequencing modules supporting the MaterniT21 diagnostic test, utilizing Illumina-based NGS of cell-free fetal nucleic acid, and analysis of the relative amount of trisomy 21, 18, 13. Prior to that, Sundlof worked at LabCorp in molecular genetics and oncology laboratories, where he analyzed patient samples for inherited genetic diseases and gene mutations. Sundlof graduated with B.S. in health science from the State University of New York, SUNY Brockport.

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Melissa Kelly completed her PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She continued her learning experience as a post-doctoral fellow, working with Drs. Howard Jacob and Elizabeth Worthey at HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. Later, she became the Lab Supervisor for Software Development and Informatics, under the direction of Dr. Worthey. During her time at HudsonAlpha, Melissa has been involved in a variety of projects, including diagnosis of rare disease through the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, identification of genetic modifiers in cystic fibrosis, and development of software for genomic analysis and interpretation.

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James Holt completed his PhD in Computer Science at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where he developed novel bioinformatics algorithms for processing, storing, and querying sequencing data from Collaborative Cross mice. He continued his studies as a post-doctoral fellow in the Software Development and Informatics group at HudsonAlpha, focusing on development and application of algorithms and methods for analyzing clinical sequencing data in the context of rare disease patients. While at HudsonAlpha, he has developed pipelines for identifying pathogenic structural variants, algorithms for identifying diploid-triploid mixoploidy, and machine learning methods for prioritizing clinical variants.

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Nadiya Sosonkina graduated from the School of Pharmaceutical Science, Health Sciences University of Hokkado, Hokkaido, Japan in 2012. In the following year, she joined the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI where she ultimately joined the Howard Jacob laboratory, focusing on genetics of rare diseases. In 2015, Nadiya moved to HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, along with Jacob laboratory. In 2017, Dr. Sosonkina was selected as a trainee in the UAB-HudsonAlpha genomic Medicine Training program funded by National Human Genome Research Institute. Her research focused on analysis and evaluation of novel approaches to improvement of the diagnostic outcome for rare and undiagnosed diseases. She has a particular interest in the genetics of autism spectrum disorder. Upon completion of her fellowship, Dr. Sosonkina was offered a position of Clinical Translational Scientist at the Clinical Services Laboratory (CSL). She has joined CSL in July of 2019 and is excited about this opportunity to apply her knowledge and skills in human genetics and genomic medicine to the improvement of patients care.

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Kelly Williams completed her PhD at Iowa State University in 2009. Since then, she has enjoyed working at HudsonAlpha, first as a postdoctoral fellow in the Myers Lab and later as a senior scientist in the Absher Lab. Kelly has over 15 years of laboratory and analytical research experience in multidisciplinary fields including nutrition, toxicology, molecular biology, biochemistry, and genomics, epigenetics, and transcriptomics.

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Meghan Pool is the Lab Business Coordinator for the HudsonAlpha Clinical Services Laboratory. She joins the team with a B.S. in Healthcare Management from the University of Alabama Birmingham and is currently enrolled at the University of North Alabama for her MBA. Prior to joining the Institute, she was the Business Manager of Alabama Psychological Services Center.

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Meghan Letson joined the HudsonAlpha Clinical Services Lab in February 2021 as a clinical lab technician. Letson earned her B.S. in genetics and genomics from The University of Alabama at Birmingham. Prior to joining the Institute, she was a medical and clinical laboratory technician with Passion HR, Inc. and a forestry field technician at Alabama A&M University Agribition.

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Laura Griffin joined the Hudson Alpha Clinical Lab Services team in March 2021 as a clinical laboratory technologist. She earned her bachelor’s degree in medical laboratory science from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2011. Laura has previous experience working in the clinical laboratory at Huntsville Hospital and as a lead medical technologist at Crestwood Medical Center.

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John joins HudsonAlpha as a Clinical Laboratory Scientist. He has an M.S. in Biology from The University of Alabama. He most recently worked as a Senior Sequencing Specialist at Discovery Life Sciences.

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Shaterrika is a Clinical Laboratory Scientist with the Clinical Services Lab team. She is currently working on a Biological Sciences M.S. from the University of Alabama at Huntsville. She most recently worked as a Scientist II at Celsion Corporation.

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Devin Absher, PhD, serves as the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology’s Director for Genomic Health, which includes The HudsonAlpha Health Alliance, the HudsonAlpha Clinical Services Lab, and The Smith Family for Genomic Medicine. Before joining HudsonAlpha, Absher was a senior scientist at the Stanford Human Genome Center. Absher earned his PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from Emory University in Atlanta in 2000. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in human genetics at Stanford University in 2005.

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