Kathleen Mulvaney, PhD

Kathleen Mulvaney earned her doctorate in cell biology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in the lab of Ben Major, following her Bachelor of Science degree in molecular genetics from the University of Rochester. She subsequently served as a postdoctoral fellow in the William Sellers Lab at the Broad Institute and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Cambridge, Mass. Her research focuses on targeting protein-protein interactions for therapeutic development in cancer. She was awarded the National Institutes of Health's F32 Ruth L. Kirchstein Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Award and the LRP Award, and the Sigma Xi Research Society Graduate Student Travel Award. She joined the faculty of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC in 2022.

Research Faculty and Staff

  • Samar Sayedyahossein

    Staff Scientist

    Samar is a senior research scientist who joined the Mulvaney Lab from the National Institutes of Health. She graduated from Isfahan University of Medical Sciences with an M.D. and earned her Ph.D. in molecular biology from Western University in Canada, specializing in cancer biology and cell signaling. 

  • Eliana Destefanis

    Postdoctoral Fellow

    Eliana is a postdoctoral associate in the Mulvaney lab. She is a graduate of the University of Trento in Trent, Italy, where she studied computational biology.

  • Sam Moffitt

    Research Assistant

Graduate and Medical Students

  • Blanka Bordas

    Graduate Student

    Blanka is a graduate research assistant in the Mulvaney lab. She is currently a graduate student in the Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health (TBMH) program at Virginia Tech and is interested in molecular biology research as well as in public health. Outside of school, Blanka enjoys going on walks, doing crafts, and calling her mom. 

  • Mary Enakireru

    Graduate Student

    Mary is a graduate research assistant in the Mulvaney lab. She is currently a graduate student in the biochemistry program at the University of Calabria in Italy. Through the European Union's Erasmus Mundus program, Mary will complete her master's thesis at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute's Cancer Research Center — D.C. 

  • Mohammed Kadiri

    Graduate Student

    Mohammed is currently a graduate student in the Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health (TBMH) program. His research interests are primarily centered around the basic sciences of oncology and its clinical applications. He believes that by strengthening our field’s understanding of tumorigenic cellular mechanisms, we may be able to better develop specific and targeted treatments that improve the current status quo

  • May Khalil

    Medical Student

    May is a medical student at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. Before medical school, she worked on research projects in lung cancer and transplantation, which sparked her passion for immunology and cancer biology. She is especially interested in translational research that connects bench discoveries to bedside care to improve patient outcomes. Clinically, she is currently drawn to oncology but also keeping an open mind. 

Undergraduate Students and Interns

  • Patricia Latimer

    High School Intern

    Patricia is a high school research intern in the Mulvaney Lab. Her work in the lab is centered around structural biology, which she looks at using computational methods.

  • Anusha Patil

    Undergraduate Student

  • Enrique

Alumni

  • Diya Chhabra

    Summer Intern

  • Cole Simon

    Graduate Student

  • Sydney Zagar

    Research Technician

  • Nikola Knoll

    Masters Student

  • Kaiyuan Zheng

    Staff Scientist

  • Sara Yoon

    Undergraduate Summer Intern

  • Prakriti Setlur

    Undergraduate Intern

  • Jennifer Houston

    Research Technician