Farewell to Our Graduating Lab Members

As the academic year concludes, we want to reflect on the incredible contributions of our graduating lab members. Each student was an integral part of our collaborative team. Their dedication, hard work, and curiosity propelled our research forward. While sad to see them move on, we are immensely proud of all they accomplished during their time here and excited to see what their futures hold.

Wesley Blashka

Wesley graduated in December 2023 with a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Spanish. As an undergraduate, he built small-scale internal software tools for record keeping and analysis. Wesley's role evolved after graduating, where he played an instrumental role in our computational analysis abilities as a Research Technician. Wesley is the proud developer of Anatalyst, the Brown Lab single-cell RNA sequencing analytical pipeline. Based on this project, Wesley received the 2025 Debra A. Hullet, PhD Best Poster award at the Department of Surgery Research Summit. He also contributed to Diminished Immune Cell Adhesion in Hypoimmune ICAM-1 Knockout Human Pluripotent Stem Cells (Saha, et. al, 2025), which is under review for publication in Nature Communications.

Wesley plans to start medical school in June. He will be an MD Candidate at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

Zach Bromet

Zach graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and a certificate in Global Health. While pursuing his degree, Zach also completed the necessary medical school prerequisites. He plans to pursue a master's in Personalized Medicine and Applied Engineering at Yale University before applying to medical school. 

In the lab, Zach contributed to the gavage and trisomy 21 projects. His main focus included animal handling with the Humanized Mouse Core and Brown lab, which included flow cytometry, humanized mouse bleeds, and cage changes.

Abbey Henrichs

Abbey graduated in December 2024 with a Bachelor of Science in Neurobiology and Psychology. As an undergraduate, she conducted literature searches, worked with humanized mice, and performed flow cytometry with FlowJo analysis. This work contributed to the trisomy 21 and ICAM-1 knockout projects. After graduating, she transitioned her focus to characterizing thymic fibroblasts using flow cytometry as a Research Technician.

Abbey is pursuing a Master of Science in Law at Northwestern University before attending medical school.

McKeon Lucas

McKeon graduated from UW-Madison with a Bachelor of Science in Neurobiology and a Certificate in Health and the Humanities. Much of his work in the lab involved bleeding mice and processing blood samples, as well as training students to do the same. He contributed most heavily to the Gavage study with BMS and will achieve a publication regarding this work in the future.

McKeon will attend the Medical College of Wisconsin starting in June to pursue an MD.

Jacob Mielke

Jacob graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Mathematics, as well as a certificate in History.

He decided to take a gap year and is currently applying to medical school. During this year, Jacob will continue to work at the hospital and in the Brown lab.

In the lab, most of Jacob's work is focused on our bioinformatics capabilities. Specifically, he analyzes single-cell RNA sequencing data.

Lydia Murphy

Lydia earned a B.S. in Molecular and Cell Biology and Psychology. She is currently attending UW-Madison’s Physician Assistant Program with plans to graduate in Spring of 2027.

During her time in the lab, Lydia primarily worked with bioluminescent imaging. She also had a hand in humanized mouse blood collection, flow cytometry, and assisting with suturing during humanized mouse surgeries. Lydia is fortunate to have her work as a part of the Lab Animal NeoThy mouse model publication and the bioRxiv ICAM-1 knockout paper.

Abhiram Nettem

Abhiram graduated in December 2024 with a Bachelor of Science in Neurobiology. He will work at Northwestern Medicine as a Clinical Support Tech while applying to medical school.

During his time in the Brown Lab, Abhiram worked with static and dynamic microscopy, tissue collection, and flow cytometry.

Merrick Scholz

Merrick graduated from UW-Madison in 2024 with a Bachelor of Science in Cellular and Molecular Biology and Neurobiology with Honors in the Liberal Arts.

He will enter the M1 class at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in August 2025. Although Merrick is not sure what specialty is right for him, he is interested in something immunology-adjacent (transplant, allergy, infectious disease, ect.).

During his time in the lab, Merrick's achievements included establishing the RNA isolation and sequencing analysis procedures and helping with the development of the in vitro co-culture model. This was related to his Hilldale award during undergrad and is part of the ICAM-1 Knockout Nature Communications manuscript currently under review.

Jiwon Seo

Jiwon graduated with a Master of Science in Comparative Biomedical Sciences. Her thesis focused on modeling myocardial infarction using a humanized mouse model. She made significant contributions to several Brown Lab publications. Since graduating, she looks forward to starting her career in industry.

Thank you for your contributions to our team, and congratulations on all your amazing achievements. We cannot wait to see the continual impact each of you will have on this field. We wish you success, fulfillment, and continued discovery in your future pursuits!