Dr. Jake Michaelson is a Roy J. Carver professor of psychiatry and neuroscience and director of the division of computational and molecular psychiatry at the University of Iowa. His lab studies the effect of genetic variations on the development of the brain, with specific applications in autism and language impairment. He earned his B.S. and M.S. in biological engineering at Utah State University before earning his PhD in computational biology at the Technische Universität Dresden in Germany in 2010. After his time in Germany, he joined the lab of psychiatric geneticist Jonathan Sebat at UC San Diego, where he completed his postdoctoral training and published several of the earliest papers dealing with whole genome sequencing in autism. In 2013 he joined the faculty at the University of Iowa, and his research is supported by NIMH, NIDCD, NICHD, NHGRI, the Simons Foundation, the Roy J. Carver Trust, and the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.

Ethan recently received his PhD in Computational Genetics from the University of Iowa and is doing postdoctoral work at WashU.

Leo was one of our MD/PhD student in Iowa's MSTP program and a graduate research assistant in the Michaelson lab.

Tanner was the first graduate student to join the Michaelson Lab as part of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Genetics.

Yongchao joined the lab as a masters student aiming to use bio-imaging tools to understand mental disorders.

Taylor is currently pursuing post-doctoral work in Boston, MA.

Lucas joined the lab as a graduate student from the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Genetics in 2021, after previously working in the lab as a clinical research assistant. He is broadly interested in the genetic variation that makes us all so unique. As a result, his research projects focus on: language ability, risk for psychiatric conditions, and their shared biological underpinnings. He graduated from Cornell College with a BA in Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience. Much of his free time is spent watching sci-fi movies and exploring the Midwest.

Taylor is currently at the University of Washington.

Ben Tysseling is a 2019 graduate of the University of Iowa where he majored in Computer Science and minored in Spanish. Currently, he is working part time here at the lab as a web application developer. What he loves most about this field is getting to learn new things everyday and applying problem solving to code. Ben started working in the lab as an RA in the beginning of the Fall 2019. Outside of his job, he enjoys playing basketball, blasting EDM music, and watching Survivor.