People

Serine Avagyan, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor

Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplantation

The goal of our research is to understand how the hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), their clonal composition and competition, and their progeny affect initiation of blood disorders. Early-onset clonal hematopoietic disorders, including malignant diseases like pediatric MDS or acute myeloid leukemia, are states of significant disturbance of the balanced clonal output. Origins of these early-onset diseases are poorly understood, but likely involve developmental acquisition of mutations that shape hematopoiesis over years.

Postdoc, 2026

Bibhudev Barik, PhD

Postdoctoral fellow

Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplantation

I am a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Av

Pallavi Agarwal, MBBS

Clinical fellow

Pediatric Hematology-Oncology

I am a clinical fellow in the division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at UCSF. My background includes pediatric training in India and the United States, with an interest in blood stem cell transplantation (SCT) and cellular therapies. I have seen firsthand how curative options like transplantation and gene therapy can transform outcomes for children with hematologic disorders, which has shaped both my clinical focus and research direction. I joined the Avagyan lab to study the mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of monosomy 7 associated myeloid malignancies.

Ying-Rong Liu

Staff research assistant

M_PEDS-BONE MARROW TRANSPLANT

I am a staff research assistant in the Avagyan lab. My research project aims to reprogram patient cells into iPSCs with germline GATA2 mutations, then induce ASXL1 mutations to explore how the combination of GATA2 and ASXL1 mutations affect hematopoietic stem cells and lead to clonal hematopoiesis. My hobbies include reading, running, baking bread, listening to music, and zumba.

Yingxin Su, PhD

Fish care specialist

M_ObGyn-CRS-Core

I received my BS and PhD degrees in Animal Biology from UC Davis. As a fish care specialist, I taking care of ~1000 tanks of zebrafish in Wagner Lab and Avagyan Lab everyday. At the same time, as a post doctoral researcher, I am studying the similarity of gene expression between homologous genes in humans and zebrafish by building a cross-species single-cell RNA-seq reference atlas.

Emily Tomlinson, MD

Clinical fellow

Pediatric Hematology-Oncology

I am a clinical pediatric hematology/oncology fellow at UCSF. My research interests include improving outcomes in pediatric leukemia through mitigation of treatment toxicity and further understanding its pathogenesis, especially in underserved populations.