Our Team

Rachel was the first graduate student to join the lab. She completed her PhD and graduate in 2022. Rachel pioneered the work defining the unique DNA damage responses activated by RAG-mediated DNA breaks. After graduation, Rachel joined IASO Therapeutics in East Lansing, Michigan.

Neetij completed his undergraduate degree at St. Olaf College with a major in Biology and a minor in Biochemistry. He spent a year in the Postbaccalaureate Intramural Research Training program at NIH, and was later awarded a Fulbright research grant to conduct research at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas in Madrid, Spain. In Fall 2022, Neetij started medical school at WashU. During summer 2023, he did a research elective in the Bednarski lab studying the function of BCLAF1 in AML pathogenesis, and he plans to spend a year in the lab in 2024. Outside of lab, Neetij plays the piano and ping-pong, and he’s a whiz at bar trivia.

Brendan completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in May of 2016 and enrolled as a Biochemistry student at WashU later that fall. After a few rotations he joined the Bednarski lab in the fall of 2017. Outside of the lab you can almost always find him jamming to some music or creating some of his own. Brendan’s research focuses on the H2A deubiquitinase MYSM1 and its role in modulating the DNA damage response in developing B cells. Brendan recently defended his thesis and officially graduated as Dr. Mathias!

Deepti was a post-doctoral researcher and staff scientist. Deepti first identified BCLAF1 as a transcriptional regulator in early B cells undergoing antigen receptor gene recombination. After her time in the lab, she moved to a position in industry in St. Louis and then in California.