Amanda Lea

Amanda (she/her) is the lab PI. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences.
Contact her at: amanda.j.lea@vanderbilt.edu

Marina Watowich

Marina Watowich (she/her) is an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow in the Lea Lab. Marina’s research investigates how environmental and social adversities affect long-term health and immune system aging in humans and non-human primates. Her work also seeks to understand the factors that contribute to resilience in the face of adversity, as well as basic mechanisms of gene regulation. In the Lea Lab, Marina works primarily with the Turkana and Tsimane populations.
Contact her at: marina.watowich@vanderbilt.edu

Audrey Arner

Audrey (she/her) is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the Lea lab. She is interested in understanding human adaptation to diverse and changing ecological and cultural environments, as well as the underlying molecular mechanisms causally connecting genotype to phenotype. She is also passionate about community engagement and is committed to engaging in respectful, mutually beneficial partnerships with participant communities.​ Audrey's work focuses on the Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia.
Contact her at: audrey.m.arner@vanderbilt.edu

Amy Longtin

Amy (she/her) is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the Lea Lab. She is interested in how genetic effects on complex traits vary across tissues or environments, using gene regulation in nonhuman primates as a model. Amy's work focuses on multi-tissue DNA methylation analyses in the rhesus macaques of Cayo Santiago, as well as studies of genotype-by-environment interactions in great ape immortalized cell lines.
Contact her at: amy.l.longtin@vanderbilt.edu

Layla Brassington

​Layla (she/her) is an NIH T32 Graduate Research Fellow in the Lea Lab. She is interested in the gene regulatory mechanisms that connect environmental factors to key organismal phenotypes, such as health or life history-related traits. She is also interested in understanding the molecular intermediaries that create genotype-by-environment interactions in diverse human populations.
Contact her at: layla.brassington@vanderbilt.edu

Jonathan Lifferth

Jonathan is an NIH T32 Graduate Research Fellow in the Lea Lab. He is co-advised by Melinda Aldrich at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He is interested in the role of genetic ancestry in genotype-by-environment interactions underlying complex health traits, including lung cancer and infection response. He is optimistic that a robust molecular understanding of human evolution will improve medicine and human-built environments.
Contact him at: jonathan.lifferth@vumc.org

Rebecca Cheng

Rebecca is a Research Assistant in the Lea lab. She ensures that research in the wet lab runs smoothly. She assists in the development, troubleshooting, and implementation of a wide range of genomic and molecular protocols.
Contact her at: churong.cheng@vanderbilt.Edu

Undergraduate students

Rebecca Wilson (2025-present)
Vivian Dong (2025-present)
​Diane Song (2025-present)
Ian Mathews (2025-present)
Faith Franklin (2026-present)

Lab alumni

Rachel Petersen - 2022-2026 - postdoctoral researcher (now Assistant Professor at University of New Mexico)
Rob Tennyson - 2024-2025 - postdoctoral researcher (now Lecturer at University of Washington)
Grace Rodenberg - 2023-2025 - research assistant (now PhD student at University of Colorado Anschutz)
​​Nicholas Ryan - 2022-2026 - research assistant
Sai Han Presley - 2021-2022 - lab manager

​Peyton Coleman - 2023 - IGP graduate student (rotation)​
Jay Pardo - 2022 - BSCI graduate student (rotation)
Catherine Green - 2022 - IGP graduate student (rotation)
Luis Martinez - 2022 - BSCI graduate student (rotation)

Mary Li - 2025-2026 - high school student
Jonathan Lorenz - 2025-2026 - undergraduate student
Lisa Yang - 2023-2026 - undergraduate student
​Selina Wang - 2023-2026 - undergraduate student (now MD student at University of Tennessee Health Science Center)
Sabina Thabit-Yousef - 2023-2024 - high school student
​Ryan Rossow - 2022-2023 - undergraduate student (now MD/MBA student at University of Miami)
Maggie Zhou - 2022 - undergraduate student