Members

Sruti Rayaprolu, Postdoctoral research fellow, Current position: Associate Scientist, University of Florida

Supriya Ramesha, Current position: Neurology Residency, West Virginia University

Syed Ali Raza, MBBS, Current position: Neuroimmunology Fellow, NIH Bethesda

Christina Ramelow, PhD

Christina Ramelow completed her PhD in Neuroscience at Emory University. During her PhD work, she investigated astrocytic proteomic and transcriptomic contributions to aging and Alzheimer’s disease pathogenesis and developed a new method to simultaneously capture RNA and protein-level information from neural cell types in vivo. Christina is currently a T32 postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Emory's Winship Cancer Institute, where she is examining neuroimmune pathways that contribute to the development of brain metastases.

Sydney Sunna, PhD

Sydney Sunna was a PhD student at Emory University and a NIH F31 fellow. Her doctoral work focused on the application of TurboID-NES to generate biotinylated proteomes under homeostatic and inflammatory conditions in murine cell lines to inform current and future applications of TurboID-NES in mouse models capable of labeling and resolving cellularly distinct proteomes in-vivo. She is now a project manager of the Bioleaching Lab at Freeport-McMoRan.

Christine Bowen, PhD

Christine Bowen was a PhD student at Emory University and a NIH F31 fellow. For her graduate thesis, she was interested in understanding how neuroinflammatory diseases, such as Alzheimer’s Disease, change the function and behavior of Microglia. She recently joined the University of Georgia, Isakson Center for Neurological Disease Research as a Postdoctoral Associate.

Juliet Santiago, PhD

Juliet Santiago was a PhD student at Emory University and a NIH F31 Fellow. Her research was focused on understanding how microglia state impacts the proteomic and transcriptomics cargo of extracellular vesicles that transfer an inflammatory signal to recipient cells, thus exacerbating neuroinflammatory conditions. She is currently a lead AI advisor at Frontier Design.

Aditya Natu, Data Analyst

Aditya received his Bachelors in Biological Science with a minor in Mathematics from Georgia State University. He Joined Rangaraju laboratory as a Data Analyst in January 2022 and is passionate about leveraging his background in Bioinformatics to create impact-driven solutions and insights within the field of Neurology. He is currently a master's candidate at Georgia Tech for Online Masters in Analytics program.

Ali Tfaily (Now a PhD student at Emory University)

Ali completed two years of predoctoral research in the Rangaraju Lab, which he joined at Emory University in 2022 and continued with when the lab relocated to Yale University in October 2023. His work investigated the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying neuroinflammation in AD, applying the lab's CIBOP approach to label the proteome of cholinergic neurons in mouse models and probe mechanisms of cholinergic neuronal injury in neurological disease. He is now a doctoral student at Emory University, where his research focuses on the cognitive and functional outcomes of stroke and recovery. During his PhD, he was awarded the George Woodruff Doctoral Fellowship and an Emory Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC) Research Education Component (REC) award.

Ruth S. Nelson (Now a MD/PhD student at Northwestern University)

Ruth was a member of the Rangaraju lab from 2020 to 2025, first as an undergraduate research assistant at Emory and then as a postgraduate associate at Yale. While at Emory, she completed an honors thesis researching the presence of perineuronal nets and the associated parvalbumin-positive interneurons in a mouse model of AD. Following graduation, Ruth moved with the lab to New Haven and continued her undergraduate thesis work, characterizing region-specific compositional changes in perineuronal nets in AD pathology and their contribution to disease pathogenesis. In 2025, Ruth began working toward her MD/PhD in the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at Northwestern University.

Sneha Malepati (Now a MD student at Univ Connecticut)

Sneha was a member of the Rangaraju Lab from 2022 to 2026, beginning as an undergraduate research assistant at Emory University before returning as a postgraduate at Yale. While at Emory, she was awarded the Scholarly Inquiry and Research Experience (SIRE) and Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) fellowships to support her work understanding astrocyte-specific proteomic changes following ischemia. She earned a B.S. in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology from Emory in 2024, with a minor in Physics. Returning to the lab following graduation, Sneha was involved in a variety of projects, including continuing to study glial activation and Ischemic Stroke, as well as proteomic changes with the progression of AD and with aging. She is now an M.D. student at the UConn School of Medicine and hopes to pursue a career in academic medicine.

Amanda D. Brandelli (Now a PhD student at Yonsei University, S Korea)

Amanda holds a bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences from PUCRS. She subsequently worked for two years as a Postgraduate Associate in the Rangaraju Lab at Yale University, where she investigated the functional significance of the Kv1.3 potassium channel in microglia and Alzheimer's disease. She is currently pursuing a joint M.S./Ph.D. degree at Yonsei University.

Young Lin, Emory Undergraduate Student

Hollis Zeng, Emory Undergraduate Student

Sneha Malepati, Emory Undergraduate Student

Vishnu Kumar, Emory Undergraduate Student

Tianwen Gao, Visiting graduate student, Xiangya School of Medicine CSU, China

Ngozi Nwabueze, Emory Undergraduate Student

Priyadarshi Rathakrishnan, Emory Undergraduate Student

Janna Jernigan, Undergraduate Student (UGA)

Adam Aston, Visiting Medical Student (MCG Augusta)

Jheel Shah, Emory Undergraduate Student

Tia Dowling, Emory Undergraduate Student

Michael Chen, Emory Undergraduate Student

Asiah McWhorter, Emory Undergraduate Student

Hailian Xiao 2015-2023

Lihong Cheng 2020-2023

Kyla Langdon MS 2022-2023