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. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.110960.1

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. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.87865

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. https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.201085

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. 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107960

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. https://doi.org/10.1534/g3.119.400781

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.