Principal Investigator
Daniel Faden, MD FACS
Assistant Professor, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Attending Surgeon, Mass Eye and Ear, Mass General Hospital
Associate Scientist, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Daniel Faden M.D., F.A.C.S., is a head and neck surgical oncologist and scientist in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Harvard Medical School. After completing medical school he was a Howard Hughes Research Scholar in the National Human Genome Research Institute studying cancer genomics. He then completed residency training in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at UCSF where he was embedded in the laboratory of HHMI Investigator Joe DeRisi studying viral oncogenesis. He completed three fellowships at the University of Pittsburgh in head and neck surgical oncology, in cranial base surgery, and a T32 research fellowship in the laboratory of Robert Ferris, MD PhD. In 2018 he returned to Boston where he is an attending surgeon in the division of head and neck surgical oncology at Mass Eye and Ear and Mass General Hospital and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The Faden lab is a translational research laboratory focused on head and neck cancer biomarker discovery. The lab is currently funded by three NIH grants, as well as industry and foundation awards, to utilize tissue and blood-based approaches for studying head and neck cancer genomics with a focus on development of liquid biopsies for detecting, diagnosing, and monitoring HPV-associated cancers.
Lab Members
Daniel Ruiz
Postdoc Research Fellow
Daniel first joined the lab while a final year medical student at Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá, Colombia, studying biomarkers for immunotherapy response in head and neck cancer. After completing his year as a Research Scholar, he briefly returned home to graduate from medical school and has returned to Boston as a post-doc, continuing his work on multiplexed immunofluorescence and circulating tumor cells in head and neck cancer, in close collaboration with Dr. Shannon Stott at MGH. In his spare time he enjoys outdoor activities and spending time with family and friends. He plans to pursue a career in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
Dipon Das, PhD
Research Scientist
Dipon received his PhD in cancer biology from KIIT University, India where he studied DNA damage/repair pathways. He completed post-doctoral training at Philips Institute for Oral Health Research, Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia, USA. His postdoctoral training focused on identifying the host factors essential for Human Papillomavirus (HPV) replication in cervical and head & neck cancers and delineating their mechanism of action. Before joining the Faden Lab he worked as a Senior Research Associate 2 at the University of Miami, Florida, USA. In the Faden Lab, Dipon manages the lab and leads the development of novel approaches for detecting HPV in the blood.
Gjystina Lumaj
Clinical Research Coordinator
Gjystina received her bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University and Master’s degree in Biomedical Science at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She previously worked as a surgical assistant for an oral & maxillofacial surgery practice. In her spare time she enjoys painting and baking.
Julia Mendel
Clinical research Coordinator
Julia attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, graduating with a major in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and a minor in Microbiology. She wrote her honors thesis on constructed genetic networks of differentially expressed genes, focusing on synthetic lethal interactions. When not at work, she enjoys going on long runs, hikes, and reading new books.
Samuli Eldfors, PhD
Research Scientist
Samuli earned his PhD in Genetics from the University of Helsinki, focusing on mutations driving blood cancers. He worked as a bioinformatician at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland, where he led the analysis of cancer mutations in patient samples. Before joining MEE, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School, specializing in therapeutically targetable vulnerabilities in myeloid cancers. At the Faden Lab at MEE, he specializes in the computational analysis of NGS data from liquid biopsies of HPV-associated cancers. His research interests include developing computational approaches for analyzing liquid biopsy data, with a focus on cell-free RNA and DNA-based assays
Yana Al-Inaya
Research Scholar
Yana is a student at the School of Medicine at Uzhhorod National University, Ukraine. She is interested in skull base cancers. In the Faden Lab she works on HPV vaccination and the application of Systems Serology to understand the immune response to HPV. In her free time, she enjoys hiking and gardening.
Lab Alumni
Kim Chang Sing Pang, MD
Research Scholar (2020)
Current position: Resident Physician, Amsterdam UMC, Netherlands
Mao Lin, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher (2020-2021)
Current position: Scientist, Immunitas Therapeutics
Connor O’Boyle, MD
Research Scholar (2020-2021)
Current position: Resident Physician, Wayne State University
Natalia Queenan
Clinical Research Coordinator (2020-2022)
Current Postion: Medical Student at Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Philadelphia
Markus Haas, MD
Research Scholar (2021)
Current position: Resident Physician, Medical University of Vienna
Saskia Naegele, MD
Research Scholar (2021-2023)
Current position: Resident Physician, Northwell/Hofstra
Vasileios Efthymiou, MD
Postdoctoral Researcher (2022-2023)
Current position: Resident Physician, Mass General Northshore
Brian Zhao
Research Scholar (2022-2023)
Current position: Medical Student, Brown University
Alan Ling, MD
Research Scholar (2023-2024)
Current position: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Integrative Medicine, Fudan University
Shun Hirayama, MD PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher (2022-2024)
Current position: Resident Physician, Wakayama Medical University
Michael Bryan
Research Scholar (2023-2024)
Current position: PhD student, University of Oxford