I am a virologist by avocation. When I finished my undergraduate degree, I had already been fortunate to have spent my summer doing different research projects. I took this experience into my graduate work and further enjoyed doing research science. Following my Ph.D. I began investigating how viruses take over cells, and how cells and systems respond to virus infection. I opened my laboratory at BU in 2007 and have been fortunate to be able to keep studying these questions. The techniques and impacts change, but the goal of gaining a better understanding of how viruses function remains.

I am a Pharmacology PhD Student at Boston University. My projects expand on the use of 3D tissue platforms like organ-on-chip to study virus-induced pathogenesis. As many infectious pathogens are unique catalysts for cell activation/dysfunction, this work allows the investigation of this phenomenon in an environment that closely mimics human biological, chemical, and mechanical features.

Originally from Miami, Florida, Sasha has been interested in the human aspect of disease from an early age. Her first bout with research was as an undergrad, studying protein structure in S. cerevisiae autophagy regulation at the Davis Lab (MIT Biology). She joined the Connor Lab as a means to bridge her newly-kindled interest in research with her old love of public health. Since then, she’s been able to participate in the New England Pathogen Genomics Centers of Excellence project, tracking and sequencing circulating respiratory virus samples from the greater Boston area.

Joelle got her bachelors in Biochemistry from Arizona State university, where she also spent a semester abroad at the University of Edinburgh and a summer at the Max Planck Institute in Potsdam, Germany through the DAAD scholarship studying drug discovery for biofilm prevention. Her undergraduate thesis was on curating a marmoset genome in Dr. Reed Cartwrights lab.

After graduation, she moved across the country to Massachusetts to work at Millipore Sigma in their virology and immunology department studying viral clearance and inactivation in bioprocessing. She started at Boston University in Fall of 2022 in the program in biomedical sciences. She joined Dr. John Connor’s lab the following year where her research focuses on elucidating a mechanism of action for a small molecule therapeutic of poxviruses.

Joseline M. Velasquez-Reyes is a PhD candidate in the Bioinformatics program at Boston University.  She graduated from UC Merced with degrees in Biology and Psychology in 2020. She fell in love with computational biology during her UROC project studying cattle genomes. Now, her research interests align with the topics of viral evolution, and host-virus interactions. Through the use of genomics, she studies chronic SARS-CoV-2 infections in immunocompromised individuals to understand how the virus’ evolutionary path is affected when faced with little to no immune pressures with the goal to gain a deeper understanding as to how variants of concern may be emerging. She is also interested in the host response to Lassa virus, a virus endemic to West African countries. In her free time,  she serves as a recruiter for the Bioinformatics program at SACNAS and as an executive board member of the Underrepresented Graduate Student Organization at Boston University. Outside of BU affiliated activities, you can catch her at any R&B concerts or hiking with her two dogs.

Jillian began her PhD in Bioinformatics at  BU in the fall of 2022 after graduating with a BS in Systems Biology from Case Western Reserve University. As an undergraduate, she worked in the lab of Dr. Cheryl Cameron, where she investigated the efficacy of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and antiretroviral therapy outcomes. She joined the Connor lab in the Spring of 2023 and has since been researching emerging filo- and arenaviruses using RNA-seq data from nonhuman primate infections. The bulk of her thesis work focuses on understanding the causes of defective viral genome formation but she occasionally dabbles in biomarker discovery. When not at her desk, Jill can be found trying to convince her colleagues that DVGs are the cause of any strange results they have and that they should let her look at their sequencing data 🙂 

Emily joined the Connor Lab in July 2024, after receiving her PhD from Harvard University in May 2024. In her PhD, she designed and used amplicon sequencing panels to analyze thousands of clinical malaria samples to disentangle signals of naturally acquired immunity, age, and infection risk. Before that, she worked at the Broad Institute, where she coordinated and analyzed data from high-throughput compound screens in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In the Connor Lab, she splits her time between wet and dry labs. Her current projects focus on genomic surveillance of local samples of respiratory viruses and planning for eventual work on equine encephalitis virus. Outside of the lab/computer, Emily is often knitting, baking, or gardening.

Grace got her BS in Biological Sciences from the University of Pittsburgh, and following some time post-graduation working with mosquitos in a public health products and services company, she moved to Boston to get her MPH in Epidemiology & Biostatistics from Boston University. While completing her Master’s, she worked with Dr. Jenny Linnoila in the Tanzi lab of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Neurology department to optimize an animal model of autoimmune encephalitis. She is particularly interested in infectious diseases and how they interact with both our internal and external environments. She joined the Connor lab in the spring of 2025 and currently is on a project that collaborates with Draper’s organ-on-chip model to investigate the effects of late-stage Ebola infection on the human vasculature.

Jenna joined the Connor Lab in March 2025 as a project manager. She works collaboratively with her lab mates and Draper (Cambridge, MA) on a project utilizing an organ-on-chip model to investigate late-stage Ebolavirus infection on the human vasculature. Prior to joining the NEIDL, Jenna was a research associate/technician and lab manager for nearly 10 years. During that time, she worked on a variety of topics such as screening fish cohorts for the parasitic whirling disease, investigating aspects of chromatin structure and function, developing single-cell transcriptomic methods to study the gut-brain axis, and screening candidate enhancers to use in conjunction with adeno-associated viruses. Outside of the lab Jenna enjoys quilting, snowboarding, and playing Mahjong.

Cassandra joined the Connor lab in August 2025. Her introduction to virology was in Dr. Steve McCarroll’s lab at Harvard Medical School where she worked as a research assistant to engineer barcoded rabies virus to integrate single cell RNA-seq with synaptic tracing. During her PhD in Dr. Becky Lamason’s lab, she focused on the cell biology of bacterial host-pathogen interactions as she studied how a bacterial secreted effector interacted with host endocytic machinery. Cassandra is excited to be diving back into virology as part of the Connor lab’s collaboration with Draper working towards adapting their organ-on-chip technology to investigate late-stage Ebola infection. Outside the lab, Cassandra enjoys all manner of outdoor adventures, crafting, and curling with a good book.