People

Principal Investigator

Mitchell R. Vollger

mrvollger[at]genetics.utah.edu

I'm an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Genetics at the University of Utah, where I started my lab in January 2026. My research centers on the most complex and rapidly evolving parts of the human genome: segmental duplications. These regions are rich in genes, riddled with structural variation, and have been largely inaccessible to standard sequencing approaches. My lab uses long-read sequencing, haplotype-resolved genome assembly, and single-molecule epigenomics to finally resolve them. I did my Ph.D. in Genome Sciences at the University of Washington with Evan Eichler, where I developed methods for sequencing and assembling segmental duplications. As a postdoc with Andrew Stergachis, I built the computational framework for Fiber-seq, a method for profiling chromatin accessibility on single DNA molecules. I co-chaired the Segmental Duplications Working Group in the T2T Consortium, leading the characterization of duplicated sequences in the first complete human genome, and I'm a member of the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium.

Walker Meyer

Graduate Student

walker.meyer[at]utah.edu

I am a current graduate student in the Vollger lab, pursuing a PhD in Human Genetics. After completing my undergraduate degree at the University of Oregon, followed by stints in wildlife biology and carpentry, I returned to academics to follow a passion for applying genetics and genomics to questions of human health. My background spans ecology and evolution, synthetic biology, and cancer genetics, with a long-standing focus on epigenetics and genome regulation. In my current research, I use computational approaches to study chromatin biology and genome evolution as they relate to human disease. Outside the lab, I enjoy reading, drawing, drinking coffee, and spending time in Utah’s mountains.

Cade Mirchandani

Staff

I am a bioinformatician with a background in population genomics and software development. I am driven by a desire to make research software that is not only performant but genuinely easy to use. I am also part of the Snakemake maintainer team, and I care deeply about reproducibility and good software engineering practices in science. I studied molecular biology as an undergrad at UC Santa Cruz and completed my PhD there in Biomolecular Engineering and Bioinformatics, where I developed computational tools and pipelines for large-scale genomic analysis. Outside of the lab, I enjoy mountain biking, running the trails around Santa Cruz, hiking with my partner and dog, and teaching Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

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