Education

(2020-2026) Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, & Biochemistry
Brown University, Providence, RI

(2022 – 2024) Master of Science in Data Science
Brown University, Providence, RI

(2015 – 2020) Bachelor of Science in Bioengineering
University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA

Research Experience

(2020-2026) Graduate Student
Brown University
Laboratory of Dr. Erica Larschan

(2017-2020) Undergraduate Researcher
University of California Santa Cruz
Laboratory of Dr. Jordan Ward

Research Interests

Neuropsychiatric disorders, chromatin biology, genetics, computational biology, & machine learning

Publications

Aguilera JL*, Cortez K*, Segarra Alonzo LC, Aldana M, Aragon A, Gray CM, Woodman-Sousa M, Grive K, Ray M, & Larschan E (2026). Differential chromatin looping regulated by two GA-binding transcription factors creates an X-specific chromatin environment for dosage compensation. In Review (Genome Research). *Authors contributed equally

Aguilera JL, Duan E, Cortez K, Lee R, Aragon A, Ray M, & Larschan E (2026). The CLAMP GA-binding transcription factor regulates heat stress-induced transcriptional repression. eLife.

Ray M, Conard AM, Urban J, Mahableshwarkar P, Aguilera JL, Huang A, Vaidyanathan S, & Larschan, E (2023). Sex-specific splicing occurs genome-wide during early Drosophila embryogenesis. eLife.

Johnson LC, Vo AA, Clancy JC, Myles KM, Pooranachithra M, Aguilera JL, Levenson MT, Wohlenberg C, Rechtsteiner A, Ragle JM, Chisholm AD, & Ward JD (2023). NHR-23 activity is necessary for C. elegans developmental progression and apical extracellular matrix structure and function. Development.

Kumar AV, Mills J, Parker WM, Leitão JA, Rodriguez DI, Daigle SE, Ng C, Patel R, Aguilera JL, Johnson JR, Wong SQ, & Lapierre LR. (2023). Lipid droplets modulate proteostasis, SQST-1/SQSTM1 dynamics, and lifespan in C. elegans. iScience.

Martinez MAQ, Kinney BA, Medwig-Kinney TN, Ashley G, Ragle JM, Johnson L, Aguilera JL, Hammell CM, Ward JD, & Matus DQ (2020). Rapid Degradation of Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins at Single-Cell Resolution with a Synthetic Auxin. G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics.

Personal Interests

When not in lab, I usually am hanging out with my dogs, Tormenta and Miko. In addition, I enjoy trying new restaurants and coffee shops.