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Alagpulinsa Laboratory
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INFORMATION FOR

Lab Members

Prinicipal Investigator

  • David A. Alagpulinsa, PhD

    Assistant Professor

    Research Interests
    • Autoimmune Diseases
    • Cardiovascular Diseases
    • Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1
    • DNA Transposable Elements
    • Genetics
    • Hematopoiesis
    • Hematopoietic Stem Cells
    • Islets of Langerhans
    • Myocardial Infarction
    • Genomics
    • Atherosclerosis
    • Epigenomics
    • Single-Cell Analysis
    • Clonal Hematopoiesis
    David is an Assistant Professor of Comparative and Cardiovascular Medicine. His doctoral studies in Interdisciplinary Biomedical Sciences at the University of Arkansas for Medical Scinces in Little Rock, Arkansas, focused on defining and exploiting the mechanisms that maintain genome integrity in multiple myeloma, a hematologic malignancy of B lymphocytes. He completed a postdoctoral training at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, developing strategies to immunoprotect endogenous and transplanted islets to treat type 1 diabetes without systemic immunosuppression. David joined the Yale Center for Molecular and Systems Metabolism and Department of Comparative Medicine at Yale as an Assistant Professor in 2023 to establish the AlagsLab. Research in the AlagsLab integrates knowledge from genetics, developmental and molecular biology, immunology, biomedical engineering, and statistical and computational biology to understand complex traits and diseases, including hematopoiesis, T1D, and cardiovascular disease.
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Postdoctoral Research Associates

  • Sanmi Emmanuel Alake, PhD

    Postdoctoral Associate

    Sanmi holds a master’s degree in biochemistry and a PhD in molecular nutrition. His previous research focused on the role of bioactive food constituents in immune response in the gut-cardiovascular axis. His current research focuses on defining how genetic predisposition may link coronary artery disease and type 1 diabetes through hematopoiesis. Sanmi enjoys reading and engaging in scientific dialogues. You will find him catching up with friends and family in his free time.
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  • Zehra Syeda, PhD

    Postdoctoral Associate

    Zehra is interested in applying modern statistical genetics and computational tools to understand the genetic basis of type 1 diabetes. She is particularly interested in using high-throughput single-cell sequencing technologies to unveil novel genetic regulatory pathways and drug targets for type1 diabetes. She is passionate about learning new computational and bioinformatics tools. Zehra loves to cook food and watch movies with her daughter in her free time.
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Research Assistants

  • Priscilla Saarah

    Research Assistant 1, MS

    Priscilla has a bachelor’s in biology with a computer science minor from Dillard University. She finds neuroscience and artificial intelligence research fascinating. She is expanding her interests to type 1 diabetes, which she started at Massachusetts General Hospital in the Alagpulinsa laboratory. She has always had a thing for clinical care and plans to pursue both medicine and research and believes in the concept of ‘bench to bed-side’ research.
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  • Heyu Wang

    Research Assistant, Alagpulinsa Laboratory

    Heyu (Leah) specializes in Biostatistics. With a foundation in pharmaceutical science from Peking University, her research interests are in computational biology and statistical genetics. Currently, she is applying multimodal bioinformatics and statistical genetics approaches to identify the genetic relations between Type 1 Diabetes and Coronary Artery Disease. Before Yale, Leah worked in the pharmaceutical industry, contributing to research and data analysis at GE Healthcare and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Ltd. She is passionate about applying research findings to therapeutic interventions.
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