Current Members

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Mandë Holford is an Associate Professor in Chemistry at CUNY-Hunter College and Graduate Center, with scientific appointments at the American Museum of Natural History and Weill Cornell Medical College. Her appointments reflect her traditional training in synthetic peptide chemistry and her subsequent interest in evolution of venomous marine organisms and characterization of venom peptides. Dr. Holford’s research is at the forefront of Chemical and Biological Diversity – pioneering an evolutionarily integrated approach to the discovery of novel venom peptides for therapeutic development in pain and cancer. 

Juliette received her BS from Colby College, majoring in Biology and Animal Ethics, and received her MS from Hofstra University, majoring in Biology. Juliette is currently a PhD student working on venom variation and population genetics of the neogastropod clade. To complete this work, she uses next generation sequencing and bio-informatics. She has also had the privilege of joining Dr. Holford in the field for two expeditions to Papua New Guinea in the hopes of increasing the pool of available Terebridae toxins. Additionally, she spent the summer in Paris working on Terebridae taxonomy and the classification of potentially new species. 

James received a BS in Forensic Toxicology and Molecular Biology from John Jay College in 2015. He continued his study to receive an MS in Pharmacology from Weill Cornell in 2018. He took a gap year to teach as an adjunct at his Alma Mater prior to entering the CUNY Biochemistry Ph.D. Program in Fall 2020. As a rotation student in the Holford lab, James is currently working to synthesize recombinant Terebridae venom peptides and to characterize Terebridae venom peptide binding through homology modeling.

William is currently an undergraduate senior majoring in Chemistry and minoring in Mathematics and Physics at Hunter College. He joined the Holford lab in January of 2018. His work at the lab involves the synthesis and purification of terebrid snail peptides by employing Fmoc solid phase peptide synthesis and liquid chromatography. He has also involved in modifying protocols experimentally so that they can be adapted in characterizing the more recently discovered terebrid venom peptides. After graduating, William hopes to pursue a doctoral degree in either Synthetic Organic Chemistry or Organometallic Chemistry.

Eleonora received a BA in Biology at Hunter College in 2020. She joined the Holford lab in June of 2018. Her work in the lab involves computation programming and she is a part of bioinformatic team in the lab. Their project involves automating functional script to characterize venom peptides. She also was a part of the team that partnered up with American Museum of Natural History to work on the genomic project and help characterize a luciferase gene. After graduating, Eleonora hopes to pursue a MD or MD/PhD degree.