Team
Robert Wirka, MD - Principal Investigator
Rob completed his B.S. in Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his M.D. at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. He completed his Internal Medicine Internship and Residency at the University of California-San Francisco and his Cardiology Fellowship at Stanford University. At Stanford, he trained in the lab of Tom Quertermous, investigating the mechanisms of causal genes revealed by coronary disease GWAS. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiology, and practices General Cardiology.
Thiel Lehman, PhD - Research Specialist
Danica Dy, PhD Candidate
Danica graduated with her BS in Biology from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2020. Prior to pursuing her graduate degree, Danica was a research intern at the Gilbride Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University where she worked on a project identifying ciprofloxacin-resistant bacteria in urban water sources and quinolone resistance genes as a mechanism for ciprofloxacin resistance. She continued her undergraduate research with the Caron Lab at UNC-Chapel Hill where she contributed to various projects studying signaling pathways important for the development and maintenance of the lymphatic vasculature. Her thesis work with the Wirka Lab focuses on investigating causal genes driving atherosclerosis acting in different cell types. Outside of the lab, Danica has served as a Peer Mentor for UNC’s Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD) program and UNC’s SURE/SOLAR program, is a contributing author to The PipettePen and NC DNA Day blogs, has served on the Organizing Committee for North Carolina’s Science Communication Conference (ComSciCon-Triangle), and is a mentor through the international STEM network, GradMAP Philippines. She is passionate about increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM and strives to increase accessibility to science through science communication.
Tiffany Riascos, BS, Graduate Student
Tiffany is a first year BBSP graduate student in the department of Pharmacology. She is interested in studying the molecular mechanisms of smooth muscle cell phenotypic modulation during the development of atherosclerosis and the role that GWAS genes such as TWIST1 play in disease onset and progression.