

Ahmed Eltanahy, M.D.
Research Scientist
Ahmed received his medical degree at Mansoura University, School of Medicine, Egypt. He is interested in an academic career in neurosurgery. His postgraduate research focused on brain water homeostasis and neuro-immune axis. Before joining UNR, he worked as a research scholar at Mayo Clinic to study the immune landscape of stroke thrombi and aneurysm healing. In the Gonzales lab, Ahmed is exploring the role of pericyte biology in brain homeostatic functions and developing novel methods to characterize tissue pericytes.

Cristian Franco
Ph.D. Student
Cristian received his Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry at California State University Fullerton in 2020. His undergraduate thesis was on the Carbon Dioxide Reduction to Sodium Formate on Tin Plated Zinc for Fuel Cell. Currently, he is working towards his PhD in the Biochemistry program at the University of Nevada Reno. Within the Gonzales lab, he is working on the role of pericytes in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease and the development of novel laboratory procedures.

Elena Hughes
Laboratory Technician
Elena is a graduated student from the university of Nevada, Reno. She works as a laboratory technician and manages our inventory. She hopes to gain more knowledge about research and experimentation later in the future.

Shipra Goswami
Graduate Student
Shipra earned her Bachelor of Science in Biotechnology from the University of Burdwan in West Bengal, India in collaboration with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Jharkhand, India. Her graduate thesis was titled "Survey of Short Sequence Repeats Markers on Drought Quantitative Trait Locus 12.1 in Oryza Sativa (rice)," and she earned a master's degree in Environmental Sciences from the Central University of Gujarat, India, and the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India. Her master's thesis focused on the preliminary phytochemical extraction of lipids in green algae and the antioxidant properties of the algae. She worked as a junior research fellow at the Indian Institute of Technology-Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, India. She is currently a graduate student in Gonzales' lab, where she is developing novel methods for defining tissue pericytes.

Priscilla Jeyaraj
Visiting Research Student
Priscilla has a Penultimate year BSc Biomedical Science student from Queen's University Belfast, currently on the UNR International Undergraduate Research Program in the Gonzales lab. She hopes to gain more knowledge and experience in research.