the barthel laboratory - Blog

Invited talk at Cancer Center Amsterdam

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Floris gave an invited talk at Cancer Center Amsterdam, hosted by Myron Best.

Talk at IGGSY 2026

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Floris presented at IGGSY 2026 — the International Genome Graph Symposium (July 5–9, 2026) at Monte Verità, Ascona, Switzerland.

Invited talk at the Netherlands Cancer Institute

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Floris gave an invited talk at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) in Amsterdam, hosted by Mark de Gooijer.

Invited talk at Sapienza University, Rome

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Floris gave an invited talk in the Bioinformatics & Genome Biology Lecture Series at Sapienza University’s “Charles Darwin” Department of Biology and Biotechnology in Rome, Italy, hosted by Simona Giunta.

Lab at EMBO Telomere meeting

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Floris and Yi-An attended the EMBO Workshop on Telomere function and maintenance in health and disease (May 25–30, 2026) in Lazise, Italy. Floris’s abstract was selected for an oral presentation, and Yi-An gave a lightning talk.

Rhyker presenting at RECOMB-Seq

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Rhyker and Simon Puglisi presented at RECOMB-Seq 2026 (May 24–25, 2026) in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Four new manuscripts from the lab

Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Four new manuscripts from the lab have been posted online:

Talk at CSHL Biology of Genomes

Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Floris presented at the CSHL Biology of Genomes meeting (May 5–9, 2026) at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York.

Invited talk at Yale

Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Floris gave an invited seminar at Yale University in New Haven, CT, hosted by Roel Verhaak.

Invited talk at the NCI

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Floris gave an invited talk at the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Data Science Laboratory Seminar in Bethesda, MD, hosted by Mikhail Kolmogorov.

Lab at ASHG 2025

Sat, 18 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The lab traveled to Boston, MA for the American Society of Human Genetics Annual Meeting (October 14–18, 2025), with a platform talk and four posters:

Platform talk (Floris): Telomere dysfunction promotes remote recombination events between telomeres, centromeres and ribosomal DNA that are catalyzed by long-range chromatin interactions
Poster (Yi-An): Ultra-long-range telomeric chromatin interactions are enriched in cancer cells and involve repetitive elements
Poster (Yue & Mimi): Telomere dysfunction and spatial proximity cooperate to shape the genomic evolution of pre-cancerous astrocytes
Poster (Rhyker): Sequence annotation using KaryoScope facilitates the rapid and accurate classification and quantification of repeats, genes, and other genomic elements
Poster (Sharvari): Utilizing alignment-free classification of cell-free DNA sequencing reads to monitor tumor burden in primary brain tumors

Let's go Diamondbacks!

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The team took a break at the Diamondbacks game. Although unfortunately we did not score a win, we still had a great time!

CSHL telomere meeting

Tue, 02 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Part of the lab traveled to Cold Spring Harbor, New York to attend the Telomeres & Telomerase meeting.

One year anniversary lab lunch

Fri, 30 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We reached a first milestone: the lab is officially one year old! We decided to go out for lunch to celebrate.

CSHL Brain Tumor Course

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks to the invitation of Dr. Sadhan Majumder I had the opportunity to teach at this year’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Brain Tumor course. The students and faculty were outstanding: everyone was fully engaged and embracing every opportunity to learn new things.

Lab photos

Wed, 08 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The lab was overdue a new photo so we asked Jeff Watkins to help us out and shoot us some new ones. Thanks Jeff!

Lab Dinner at Pemberton

Fri, 25 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The spring weather in Phoenix has been incredible. Had the chance to take the lab and friends out for dinner at Pemberton, which is a hip food truck venue just a few minutes walking from the lab. Great times. Need to start taking photos more often though, because I missed out on documenting several other of these fun social events we had!

Floris awarded ASCI award

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Excited to have been awarded the American Society for Clinical Investigation’s 2022 Young Physician Scientist Award along with a cohort of other talented investigators

Sylvia Chase Early Career Training Program

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Thankful to the Sylvia Chase Early Career Training Program for funding our research on telomere dysfunction in glioma

First day at the new lab

Mon, 16 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

First day at the new lab today! Here are photos of my new office and lab space:

Got started right with a notice of award for our R00 that came in a couple days ago.

Very excited to get things going!

Featured on the cover of Nature Genetics

Mon, 02 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Nice to see that the editors at Nature Genetics have decided to feature our paper on genomic signatures of cancer radiotherapy on the cover!

See the full issue here.

Genomics of Cancer Radiotherapy published in Nature Genetics!

Tue, 15 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Very happy to announce the publication of our work on the genomic effects of radiotherapy on cancer genomes!

No time to read the full paper or looking for an executive summary? Look no further! First author Emre Kocakavuk and myself both wrote tweetorials that go over the highlights.

Want to read more? You can find a full-text version of the paper on this website here.

Too much information or getting lost in the details? You can also read the press releases by TGen and JAX.

Not in the mood for reading? Listen to a short 50 second radio segment highlighting the paper on Phoenix local NPR station KJZZ here or listen to this 40 second piece from Phoenix radio station KTAR:

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Awarded Forbeck COVID recovery award

Wed, 12 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We are incredibly grateful to have been awarded a Forbeck COVID recovery grant to help recuperate funds and time lost due to the ongoing pandemic. See copied below the Spring edition of their newsletter. Thank you, Forbeck Foundation!

Riya joins the team

Sat, 01 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Riya Naik joins the team as an undergraduate summer student. She will work on characterizing interstitial telomeric repeats in eukaryotic genomes. Welcome Riya!

Hello, World!

Tue, 06 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve signed an offer letter from the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix, AZ and am incredibly excited to be joining their faculty later this year! Look for more news and updates here as I start building my research program.