About Us

Jessica Wheeler Podnar
Director
(512) 232-5924
NMS 1.118

Jessica is a graduate of Southwest Texas State University and began her career in cell and molecular biology over 19 years ago starting at a biotech company in Reno, NV focused on telomere biology.  Her next endeavor led to the Genomic Sequencing Facility where she began as the Lab Manager in June 2010, as her role continued to grow and expand so did her responsibilities which eventually lead to the opportunity to serve as the Director. Her years of experience covers a wide range of applications, from protocol development and optimization, the many transitions in NGS platforms and preps, lab and personnel management, establishing pricing structures and policies for the facility, all the way to setting up COVID testing laboratory for the university.  She is also an active member of the Association for Biomolecular Resource Facilities, a previous member and former chair of the DNA Sequencing Research Group, and current president elect for the South Central Core Collective, SC3. 

Gabriella Huerta
Program Manager
(512) 475-7706
NMS 1.264

Gabriella manages the Illumina sequencing operations and contributes to all aspects of the genomic sequencing enterprise.  Every library barcode, concentration and quality control metric is carefully scrutinized by Gabriella, as she performs the complex task of setting up the sequencing runs to assure the highest quality results.  With prior experience running NGS operations at Perlegen Sciences and Pfizer, Gabriella has the depth of experience to get the jobs done right.

Holly Stevenson
Research Engineering Scientist Associate IV
(512) 475-7706
NMS 1.264

Holly is a PhD scientist with prior experience applying and tailoring molecular protocols to cancer genetics research during her time as a graduate student and postdoc.  Her interests expanded to include genomics and she subsequently served as a Biologist in a core facility for 5 years at the National Cancer Institute, preparing NGS libraries and implementing microarrays for both research and clinical studies.  Since joining GSAF in 2017, she has assisted in testing and expanding new services, including TagSeq and 10X Genomics single-cell technologies.  She currently operates the Illumina Novaseq sequencer, manages and performs runs for single-cell studies, and aids customers in project planning and troubleshooting.

Andrew Villarreal
Administrative Associate
(512) 232-3911
FNT 1.112A

Andrew is a University of Texas at Austin alumnus who joined the CBRS team in 2015. He has over 15 years of experience in business operations, shipping, and receiving. He provides support by processing invoices, internal vouchers, and purchasing for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Biomedical Imaging Center, DNA Sequencing Facility, and Genomic Sequencing and Analysis Facility

Aditi Karmakar
Research Engineering Scientist Associate III                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                (512) 475-7706
NMS 1.264

Aditi has a master's degree in Genetic Engineering from India and has over 11 years of experience in molecular biology techniques. She has been under UT community for 5 years, and previously she has extensive experience in understanding and handling DNA and RNA for various Research purposes both in and outside UT. She was looking at how different environmental factors like; diet and alcohol can affect CNS inflammatory disorders like Multiple sclerosis in Melamed lab in UT and that experience gave her an immense knowledge on various molecular mechanisms as well as the variety of techniques that are used to study them. She has also worked as one of the technicians in Sanger core and processed samples for sequencing and Fragment analysis.   She is currently involved in a variety of DNA/RNA library preparations and operating our Illumina Miseq sequencers.  

María Jose Gomez
Research Engineering Scientist Associate II
(512) 475-7706
NMS 1.264

María attended the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia where she completed her studies on Biology with a minor in Bioinformatics.  Before joining the GSAF her work included a variety of molecular techniques on systems such as rodents, frogs, bacteria, viruses and plants.  As part of the GSAF her focus is on NGS library preparation, including DNA libraries, RNA-Seq, TagSeq and quality control of said libraries.

Coral Loockerman
Research Engineering Scientist Associate II
(512) 475-7706
NMS 1.264

Coral has a background in molecular biology, including a bachelor’s degree in cell and Molecular biology from the University of Texas and a master’s in forensic genetics from Sam Houston State University. She spent four years prior to her employment with GSAF working as a lab manager for academic labs focused on marine genomics. This work included projects on a variety of organisms from soft corals to whales at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology and coral genomics projects at the University of Texas. At GSAF she prepares samples for Illumina sequencing using a variety of DNA and RNA library preparation methods, ensures standard quality controls are met, and assists in the operation of the NextSeq.

Sylvie Beaudenon-Huibregtse
Research Engineering Scientist Associate IV
(512) 475-7706
NMS 1.264

Sylvie is a PhD scientist with years of experience in both academia and industry and special interest in projects that benefit the healthcare community. She began her career at the Pasteur Institute, in Paris, France, where she characterized several oncogenic strains of genital human papillomaviruses (HPVs) that are included in FDA-approved tests for cervical cancer screening. After receiving her PhD (University of Paris VI, Paris), she moved to the US to perform a postdoc (Harvard Medical School). Although she was offered a tenure track research position at INSERM, in France, she chose to continue her academic career in the US, as a Research Assistant Professor (Rutgers University), and as a Research Scientist (University of Texas at Austin). Although she truly enjoyed her work in Academia, she wanted to contribute more directly to patient healthcare and, in 2005, moved to industry to pursue this goal. There, she led several miRNA biomarker discovery projects for cancer diagnostics and initiated and led the development of a successfully commercialized preoperative molecular test for thyroid cancer. She came back to UT Austin in 2020 to lead, manage, and structure the university COVID-19 testing lab to CLIA compliancy and certification. She joined GSAF in 2023 to help with testing and implementing spatial transcriptomics services. She currently performs methylation arrays, using the Illumina EPIC platform, and is responsible for the NGS-based Visium HD and imaging-based Xenium platforms from 10X Genomics, respectively.