Shuai (Matt) Sun, Ph.D. Shuai is a research fellow in the Chen Lab at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC). Shuai earned his Ph.D. from the Max Planck Institute for Biology, where he demonstrated that chitin synthase CHS2 is essential for teeth formation in the predatory nematode Pristionchus pacificus and utilized single-worm RNA sequencing to investigate oscillating genes in nematode development. Dr. Sun then experienced postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School, dedicating his research to the epigenetic mechanisms controlling pluripotency in human embryonic stem cells. In the Chen lab, he is working towards elucidating the mechanisms and functions of transposable elements in mammalian early development. He has extensive expertise in stem cell biology, (epi)genome editing, low-input epigenome profiling, and computational analysis.

Shoko Ichimura, M.S. Shoko completed her MS in the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kumamoto University, Japan and worked as a clinical pharmacist in Japan for 10 years. Before joining the Chen lab, she worked at Dr. Sushma Reddy’s lab at Stanford University, where she contributed to projects investigating the role of mitochondria dysfunction and capillary disarray in congenital heart disease. After relocating to Cincinnati in August 2024, she started working at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Dr. Mingxia Gu’s lab, where she contributed to a project focused on establishing different types of organoids. She worked in both labs as a lab manager and research assistant, where she honed and utilized her skills in tissue staining and imaging such as electron microscopy, 3-D deep tissue imaging with confocal microscopy, and RNA in situ hybridization. Shoko is a Lab Manager and Research Assistant III in the Chen Lab at CCHMC.