People

Michael B. Miller, M.D., Ph.D.

Principal Investigator

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Dr. Miller is a physician-scientist interested in the mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases, serving as Principal Investigator and Associate Pathologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. 

Michael B. Miller grew up in the small Midwestern college town of Gambier, Ohio. He obtained his bachelor's degree from Grinnell College in Spanish and Biological Chemistry. There, he studied in the inquiry-based biology curriculum under Charles Sullivan and Vida Praitis, which inspired his interest in basic research and genetics. He then did a postbaccalaureate IRTA fellowship on genetic imprinting with Karl Pfeifer at the NIH (NICHD), providing a foray into using genetics to understand mammalian cells. 

Dr. Miller completed his combined MD/PhD training at the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine. His thesis research, in Biochemistry with Surachai Supattapone, examined the mechanisms of formation and propagation of infectious mammalian prions, while inspiring an interest in neuroscience and neurodegeneration. Dr. Miller completed residency in Anatomic Pathology and fellowship in Neuropathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Boston Children's Hospital. He then performed postdoctoral research with Christopher Walsh in neuronal somatic genomics at Boston Children's Hospital and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where he carried out the first studies of the genomes of single neurons in Alzheimer's disease.

Dr. Miller opened his independent laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital in 2022, focusing on the mechanisms of somatic mutation and other aspects of single-cell biology in aging and neurodegenerative diseases.

GyeungYun Kim

Postdoctoral Fellow

Yun joined the Miller Lab in the summer of 2025 after completing his PhD at Boston University, where he studied the interplay between mRNA transcription and splicing machinery. He received his MS and BS in Bioengineering from Hanyang University in South Korea. Yun is broadly interested in how somatic mutations pathologically alters the transcriptomic landscape in the aging brain and contributes to neurodegenerative disease.

Stephanie Oatman

Postdoctoral Fellow

Stephanie is a post-doctoral fellow who joined the lab in September 2025. She earned her PhD at Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in Jacksonville, FL studying the genomics and epigenomics of Alzheimer’s Disease with Dr. Nilufer Ertekin-Taner. Prior to graduate school, she completed her undergraduate training at Colorado State University after which she worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Fort Collins, CO studying bacterial tickborne diseases. Stephanie is currently interested in exploring pathways linking genomic changes with proteins core to neurodegenerative disease related processes.

Mitsugu Yanagidaira

Postdoctoral Fellow

Mitsu is a physician–scientist who completed his medical training at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) Hospital in Japan. After his residency, he pursued a career in neurology and obtained his Ph.D. from TMDU, where he studied RNA-based therapeutic approaches for genetic neurological disorders. He joined the Miller Lab in October 2025, driven by a deep interest in somatic mutations and their roles in the pathogenesis of sporadic neurodegenerative diseases. 

Jeff Rasmussen

Resident in Pathology, MD Student (2022-2026)

Jeff originally joined the Miller lab as a medical student in the Pathways program at Harvard Medical School, and is now a MGB pathology resident. Jeff's research focuses on primary tauopathy diseases and the impact of germline MAPT gene variants. Prior to medical school, Jeff earned a M.A. in Neuroscience from Brown University and a B.S. in Physiology and Neurobiology from the University of Connecticut. His undergraduate research, mentored by Dr. Rahul Kanadia, investigated the role of the minor spliceosome in FUS protein-mediated amyotrophic lateral sclerosis using an rnU11 knockout mouse.

Noel Jackson

PhD Student

Noel is a PhD candidate in the Biological and Biomedical Science (BBS) Program. She joined the lab in June 2024. She completed her Bachelor’s of Science in Cellular and Molecular Biology at Hampton University (Hampton, VA) where she worked in the lab of Dr. Diana Castillo-Carranza. In the Castillo lab, she studied the cellular release mechanisms and spread of tau oligomers. In the Miller lab, she is currently studying tauopathies by pathology-related single-cell transcriptomics.

Alejandra Garcia Carrasco

PhD Student

Ale is a PhD student in the Biological Sciences in Public Health program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She joined the Miller Lab in 2025. Originally from Mexico, she earned an engineering degree in Nanotechnology and Chemical Sciences from Tecnológico de Monterrey. Her undergraduate research focused on the susceptibility of hypertrophic cardiac cells to nanoparticle exposure, as well as the green synthesis and characterization of metallic nanoparticles.

Lauren Jeffery

Research Assistant

Lauren graduated with a B.A. in Biology from New York University in 2024 and joined the lab in the summer of 2024. Her undergraduate research, mentored by Dr. Christine Vogel and Dr. Ana Paula Zen Petisco Fiore, largely focused on investigating different responses to proteostatic stress between types of motor neurons induced from mESCs. 

Bianca Rodriguez

Research Assistant 

Bianca graduated with a B.A. in Neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania in 2025 and joined the lab in the summer of 2025. For her honors thesis under the mentorship of Dr. Ana Cristancho, Bianca explored the consequences of prenatal exposure to hypoxia on endothelial cell proliferation. Her current research focus on neurodegenerative disease and somatic mutations reflects her greater desire to understand neurological disease biology at the single-cell level.

Samadhi Wijethunga

Clinical Research Coordinator 

Samadhi joined the lab as a clinical research coordinator after graduating from Northeastern University ('25) in Behavioral Neuroscience. Prior to graduating, Samadhi worked in the Miller lab as an undergraduate student through Northeastern's cooperative education program. At Northeastern, she worked in Dr. Heather Brenhouse's Developmental Neuropsychobiology Lab, where she explored the neurobiological and psychosocial underpinnings of early life adversity on rat helping behavior.

Lara Okyay

Undergraduate Student 

Lara is an undergraduate student pursuing a Neuroscience degree at Harvard College ('27). She joined the lab in January 2024 and has a strong interest in studying Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. 

Srilakshmi Venkatesan

Undergraduate Student

Sri is an undergraduate student at Duke University ('28) studying neuroscience. She is especially interested in neurodegenerative diseases, their pathology, and understanding sporadic vs familial onset of disease. Her interests particularly lie in synucleinopathies and mutations that can lead to onset of familial PD.