Ujana Zajmi graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University (NY) where she studied cellular & molecular biology and bioinformatics. In the summer of 2019, she worked in the Hobert lab as an undergraduate researcher. She conducted behavioral and metabolic screens in Caenorhabditis elegans knockouts to examine the role of a transcription factor implicated in neuronal function and plasticity during an alternative developmental state known as dauer formation. Following this work, Ujana joined the Lopatkin lab in the summer of 2020. Using a bioinformatics approach, she explored the role of metabolism in the formation of antibiotic resistance in Escherichia coli through an analysis of metabolic and antibiotic resistance genes.

After graduating, Ujana joined Dr. Hanna Kim’s lab in the Juvenile Myositis Pathogenesis and Therapeutics Unit as a postbaccalaureate research fellow. She will utilize her background in bioinformatics to help elucidate the pathogenesis of juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) through transcriptomic and other omic analyses such as RNA-seq data analysis from JDM patients. She will also work on identifying JDM disease-activity-related biomarkers, including assessing differences in myositis-specific autoantibody groups.