Juan C. Santos -- PI
I am a molecular ecologist and evolutionary biologist with a focus on ectotherms, particularly frogs and lizards. My research centers on three main areas: (1) Neotropical biogeography and the physiological consequences of climate change in ectotherms; (2) phenotypic adaptations and the genomic and transcriptomic bases of anti-predator defense mechanisms and sexual dimorphism; and (3) systematics, taxonomy, chemical ecology, and natural history of New World reptiles and amphibians. To address these questions, I employ a range of bioinformatic tools and also collaborate with colleagues by developing and applying such approaches to diverse biological systems. I am currently an Associate Professor of Biology at SJU in the Department of Biological Sciences
PhD Students
Juan David Carvajal
Juan D. is a Colombian Ph.D. student since 2021. After complete his bachelor's degree at the Universidad del Quindío, he worked in the conservation of Colombian ecosystems. He studies parental care, climate change, and the evolution of coloration and autoresistence in aposematic frogs and respiration pigments of lizards. Juan David is also studying the impact of urbanization on genetic variability in Colombian herpetofauna. He does field work and uses diverse bioinformatic tools. He likes communicating science, reading books, listening music, and watching diverse films. You can visit his website and his google scholar.
Md Abu Bakar Siddique
Abu has been a Biology Ph.D. student since 2021. He finished his BS from SUST, Bangladesh. Before starting his Ph.D. journey, he worked in the genomic lab of Mount Sinai Hospital. He wants to use bioinformatics tools to study the genetic mechanisms of disparity in disease outcomes among amphibian species and protein evolution. Abu is an NYS-licensed and ASCP-certified clinical laboratory scientist. He loves working in the lab as well as likes reading books, adventurous traveling, solving puzzles, and playing brainstorming board games like chess.
Genrietta (Gretta) Yagudayeva
Genrietta is a Biology Ph.D. student since 2022. She graduated from Hunter College with a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and minored in Anthropology. In our lab, she studies a few projects involving the life-history of reptiles in relation to hemoglobin genes’ structure and function and its affinity to oxygen, E. anthonyi poison frogs as a model system to run transcriptomic analysis, and the poison frogs’ tadpole transport bioglue on a molecular and evolutionary basis. Outside of the lab, she is passionate about teaching and spreading science to diverse populations. In her free-time, she enjoys traveling, visiting museums, and playing the guitar.
Zinnia Adhikary
Zinnia is a Biology Ph.D. student since 2025. She completed her BS/MS in Medical Biotechnology in India, where she worked on pesticide profile characterization and plant tissue culture projects. In 2023–2024, Zinnia earned her MS in Biology at SJU under the mentorship of Dr. Yong Yu, focusing on transient receptor potential (TRP) channels, essential proteins involved in sensory physiology. In 2024–2025, she joined our lab as a graduate researcher studying the transcriptomics of amphibians. Outside the lab, she enjoys reading, playing chess, painting, and traveling.
Master Students
We are looking for interested students. Please contact me at santosj@stjohns.edu
Past Members: Graduate Students
Randy Ortiz
Randy completed his Ph.D. in 2024 and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at ISU. Prior to this, he was a faculty instructor at SUNY Sullivan. During his graduate studies at SJU, his research centered on transcriptome analyses and the development of bioinformatic pipelines. He also investigated Eleutherodactylus coqui frogs and the diversity of their associated parasites.
Devashri Narayan
Devashri was a BS/MS student in Biology. She finished her MS in 2025 after studying chitinases.
Priyanka Gera
Priyanka worked 2 years with us and finished her BS in Summer 2022. She worked in chitinases and now she is currently doing her MD at the New York Medical College.
Joseph De Leon
Joe finished his MS in Spring 2021. He worked in TLRs and now he is current a dental student at Stony Brook University with the pursuit of becoming an oral and maxillofacial surgeon.
Christopher Rivera
Christopher finished his MS in Spring 2019. He developed many of the bioinformatics pipelines for transcriptome and exome capture reconstructions.
Benjamin de Leon III
Benjamin finished his BS/MS in Spring 2019. He worked on the coevolution of amphibian mitogenomes and life history traits. He graduated in 2024 with an MD from SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University.
Priyangi Jayasuriya
Priyangi finished her MS in Spring 2019. She worked on the coevolution of amphibian mitogenomes and their environmental context. She is currently a clinical coordinator (Sacred Heart University).
Maryna Vicinanza
Maryna finished her MS in Spring 2019. She worked on models of amphibian distributions using poison frog data. She is currently at Pfizer.
Past Members (Rotating) Graduate Students
Leeann Christina Dabydeen (Spring, 2021) -- Biological Sciences MS student Bijaya Gaire (Summer, 2018) -- Rotating Biological Sciences PhD student
Past Members (Volunteering): Graduate Students
Aryaana Khan (2023 - 2024) -- Biological Sciences MS student Carolina Benitez (2021 - 2022) -- Biological Sciences MS student Karen Gonzalez (2021 - 2022) -- Biological Sciences MS student Bill Capitano (Fall, 2020) -- Biological Sciences MS student
Past Members: High School Students
A. Biswas (Spring, 2025) -- Urban Barcode Research Program (DNA Learning Center) Z. Totini (Spring, 2025) -- Urban Barcode Research Program (DNA Learning Center) Z. Wang (Spring, 2024) -- Urban Barcode Research Program (DNA Learning Center) Y. Yu (Spring, 2024) -- Urban Barcode Research Program (DNA Learning Center) E. Yick (Spring, 2023) -- Urban Barcode Research Program (DNA Learning Center) L. Lee (Spring, 2023) -- Urban Barcode Research Program (DNA Learning Center) R. Lin (Spring, 2022) -- Stuyvesant High School R. Managar (Spring, 2022) -- Stuyvesant High School R. Avezki (Spring, 2021) -- Townsend Harris High School J. Tu (Spring, 2021) -- The Kew-Forest School R. Khan (Fall, 2018) -- Queens High School for the Sciences