Lab Members
Kellee Siegfried
Principal Investigator
Kellee Siegfried received her B.S. at University of California Davis with a major in Genetics. She completed her Ph.D. in Genetics in the lab of Judith Kimble at the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2003. She then went to the Max Planck Institute of Developmental Biology to the lab of Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard where she began her post-doctoral research studying zebrafish germ cell development and gonadal sex differentiation in zebrafish. Her lab is continuing this line of research at UMass Boston.
Kazi Islam
Graduate Student
Kazi completed his undergrad in Biological Sciences from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, gaining research experience while working on the antioxidant enzyme response in fish during hypoxia. In fall 2014, Kazi came to the USA to pursue an M.S. in Biology at Eastern Illinois University, joining Dr. Michael Menze’s lab. In the Menze Lab, he worked on the role of late embryogenesis abundant (LEA) proteins in desiccation tolerance of brine shrimp. He was awarded his M.S. in Biology in 2016, and he joined the Siegfried Lab as a Ph.D. student that same year. He is currently investigating the molecular aspects of germ cell development, as well as studying a zebrafish testicular germ cell tumor model.
Jessica Macneil
Graduate Student
Jessica began in the Siegfried lab as an undergraduate in 2015, where she worked on the generation of several transgenic dmrt1 lines. She completed an Honor’s Thesis in Biology entitled, "Identification of genes regulated by the Dmrt1 transcription factor in germ cells." She received her B.S. in Biology from the University of Massachusetts, Boston in 2017. She continued her tenure in the Siegfried lab when she joined the UMass Boston M.S. program for Biology in Fall 2017. Her initial research focused on investigating Dmrt1 targets in juvenile fish as well as in mature germ cells. In November 2018, Jessica officially transitioned to the PhD track. She is currently investigating the role of telomeres in meiosis.
