Our Team

David performed his graduate work in the laboratory of Irving Weissman at Stanford University where he developed mouse models of myeloid leukemia and identified myeloid-restricted progenitor subsets. He then joined the laboratory of Leonard Zon at Harvard University where he characterized the cellular biology of the zebrafish hematopoietic system.

Since starting his own laboratory in 2004, David has received a Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health, a New Faculty Award from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and Scholar Awards from the March of Dimes Foundation, the American Society of Hematology, the Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Most recently, David was awarded the Till and McCulloch Award in 2019 from the International Society for Experimental Hematology for his pioneering work on hematopoietic stem cell development.

Lin gazed upon her first developing zebrafish embryo during her bachelor studies in Freiburg, Germany. It did not take long until she got hooked by the wonders of developmental biology. Fascinated by how organs are formed, she learned how to model Parkinson’s disease in zebrafish in Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Driever’s lab and then finished her Master thesis in 2014, exploring the mechanisms of collective cell migration in Prof. Dr. Virginie Lecaudey’s lab.

She stayed with the fish as her favourite model organism but moved to Brisbane, Australia where she explored the molecular mechanisms of lymphatic vasculature development in Prof. Dr. Ben Hogan’s lab at the University of Queensland as her PhD project, which ended in 2020.

Just prior to the COVID lockdown, Lin helped relocate the lab to Melbourne and continued her work as a postdoctoral fellow now in the context of cancer research at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center and in association with the University of Melbourne until 2021.

Switching gears to study haematopoiesis, Lin joined the Traver lab in 2022.

She enjoys her highly collaborative projects involving lineage tracking and cell line profiling in zebrafish and is also excited to be working on cellular reprogramming of human stem cells into hematopoietic stem cells.

Outside of work, Lin likes mingling with her lab members for some fun activities, she loves exploring the city trying out new things and living an active lifestyle including boxing, hiking, weight lifting, creative activities and much more.

Jose completed his undergraduate degree in Cell and Molecular Biology at California State University, Northridge (CSUN). He started his research experience studying neural crest cells in chick development under the mentorship of Dr. Crystal Rogers at CSUN. He later continued neural crest work at Caltech in Dr. Marianne Bronner’s lab, working under the mentorship of Dr. Erica Hutchins to study RNA-binding proteins in neural crest development. During his last year of undergrad, Jose also worked remotely as a research assistant in Dr. Rhiju Das’ lab at Stanford, where he worked to identify structured regions of the SARS-CoV-2 genome in a team effort to help aid therapeutic design.

Jose joined the Traver lab in 2022, where he continues his fascination with developmental biology. Now studying hematopoietic stem cells and their niche environment in zebrafish, while also conducting work with human pluripotent stem cells.

Outside of the lab, Jose enjoys playing basketball, soccer, spending time with family, and writing occasionally.

Julia Okrina holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biology with a focus on Microbiology and Genetics from the University of Vienna. During her Bachelor’s thesis at the Max Perutz Labs, she worked with cardiac stem cells, investigating key signaling pathways and proteins involved in promoting heart regeneration. She is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Applied Sciences FH Campus Vienna. In April 2025, she will join the Traver Lab for her Master’s thesis, supported by the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation. Her work will focus on the development of hematopoietic stem cells from human pluripotent precursors, continuing her interest in regenerative biology and stem cell fate decisions.

In 2022, Carsten began his research journey in the Jacobsen Lab at UCLA/HHMI, where he worked on characterizing histone-protein complexes to identify their roles in epigenetic pathways using model Arabidopsis Thaliana. From 2022 to 2024, he joined Julie Law’s Lab at the Salk Institute, focusing on the inheritance of methylation patterns in the RNA-Directed DNA Methylation (RdDM) pathway.

Carsten’s passion for stem cell biology was sparked during his undergraduate studies at the University of California, San Diego, in Dr. Traver’s class. After earning a B.S. in General Biology with a Minor in Business Economics in 2024, he joined the Traver Lab full-time. Collaborating with post-doctoral fellow Lin Grimm, he now studies the early development of hematopoietic stem cells and their niche environments using Danio Rerio and human embryonic stem cells as model systems.

Leilani Ramirez holds a bachelor’s degree In Microbiology from Cal Poly SLO. She has spent time on research teams focusing on various projects including – medical entomology studying the effects of essential oils on bacterial pathogens within cockroaches, the development of a novel testing method for human respiratory viruses, and the microbiomes of deep-sea methane seep dwelling pycnogonids. Leilani joined the Traver Lab in March of 2025.