Postbaccalaureate IRTA Fellow
National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, Division of Intramural Research, Bethesda, MD, USA
Framingham, Massachusetts, United States
Jason Cunha is an NHLBI Postbaccalaureate IRTA Fellow at the Framingham Heart Study (FHS). Jason has worked for the NHLBI in the laboratory of Andrew Johnson, PhD since May 2021, which primarily utilizes genomics, informatics, and functional assays to investigate the role of platelet development, function, and response in cardiovascular disease risk.
Prior to joining the NHLBI, Jason earned a B.A. in Biology and Minor in Creative Writing at College of the Holy Cross, where he was involved in researching the role of syndecan-1 in breast tumorigenesis utilizing a “disease-on-a-chip” model under the mentorship of Robert Bellin, PhD. He also completed a summer internship in Massachusetts General Hospital for Children’s Digestive Disease Summer Research Program, where he developed an image analysis workflow in ImageJ for measuring neutrophil motility in a microfluidic assay developed by the laboratory of Daniel Irimia, MD, PhD.
In his time at the NHLBI, Jason has submitted a manuscript examining trends between arterial tonometry, aortic and arterial diameter, arterial calcium, and platelet function measures to Platelets, which is currently undergoing final revisions before publication. In addition, he is working on three projects: 1.) A genome-wide association study (GWAS) of heavy menstrual bleeding using data from UK Biobank, FinnGen Biobank, and Million Veteran Program, 2.) A review paper of multi-omics studies into female abnormal uterine bleeding (AUB) phenotypes, and 3.) Developing an analysis workflow with open-source imaging tools to estimate total thrombus area from a whole blood flow chamber system (T-TAS). Jason will be pursuing a M.S. in Bioinformatics at Boston University in starting in the fall.