Our Team

Yuefang Zhou’s education first started in China, completing a bachelor’s degree at Nankai University and her master’s degree at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology. She came to the US and completed her PhD at Case Western Reserve University. For over the past decade, Yuefang has been a leader in cellular imaging of the eye and nervous system at WashU. She now combined her skills at the microscope with her talents with cell culture to cultivate brain organoids and discover the cellular tropisms of VA1. Her work has identified cellular tropisms that were not previously known and is now better understanding the effects of astrovirus infection on cells of the central nervous system. Zhou also leads development of our novel mouse model of astrovirus infection, the first described model for any human-infecting astrovirus.

Ashley Hahn completed her undergraduate studies at Illinois State University and then her master’s degree in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at Saint Louis University. Her work is multifaceted, leveraging her skills at the bench and in silico. She is first working on novel diagnostics for astrovirus infection, developing assays to better detect infection and identify cases of astrovirus encephalitis. She is also working on novel methods to study the s2m, using recombinant sequences to better understand the s2m’s mechanism of action. Her computational skills translate to better understanding the consequences of astrovirus infection in brain organoids, s2m discovery and analysis of all known viral RNA motifs.

Originally from Iran, Farzad Beikpour completed his PhD at the University of Bari in Italy. He is excited to join the lab to further study the s2m. His focus has been divided into two components. First, he is comprehensively describing the sequences information of all known s2m elements in viruses. His work has identified novel viruses that contain the s2m, significantly expanding the number of known phyla, classes and orders of viruses that contain viral members that encode an s2m. Second, he has been dissecting the mechanism of action of the s2m through biochemical and molecular biology techniques.

Avery Chin is a WashU undergraduate working on developing diagnostic tools for novel astroviruses, including VA2-6.

Celina Liu is a WashU undergraduate working on further understanding the role of RNA structures in the astrovirus VA1 lifecycle.