Alexander Blaylock, BS

Research Assistant II

Alexander completed his BS in 2021 from the University of Cincinnati and has been with the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center Single Cell Genomics Core since October of 2021 as a research assistant. His primary tasks within the core are generating sequence-ready libraries of cDNA from all single cell assays designed by 10x Genomics and performing quality control checks on DNA and RNA samples processed by or submitted to the core. In addition, he has been instrumental in establishing 10X Visium Spatial Gene Expression service within the core. His contributions to spatial omics service include OCT tissue embedding, quality control on RNA from tissue sections, H&E staining, and imaging prepared tissue sections for Visium.

Andrew Potter

Senior Research Assistant

Andrew completed his BS in 2008 from the University of Cincinnati and his MS from Texas A&M university– Kingsville and started his single cell experience by running droplet-based single cell assays, including Drop-Seq and 10x Genomics Chromium. Andrew has handled a variety of single cell projects utilizing the Fluidigm C1 system as well. On the 10X Chromium, he has strong hands-on skills to run both 3’v3.1 and Multiome v1.1 assays. Andrew is constantly evaluating new tools and technologies and conducting early-stage feasibility experiments as well as exploring new molecular tools and has optimized protocols for single cell and nuclei isolation from mouse, human, and non-primate tissues for use with single cell and spatial assays. As part of the Human Cell Atlas program, he has contributed to the development and optimization of cold-active single cell dissociation protocols to reduce artifact gene expression changes and has several publications to his credit as co-author. His molecular biology and wet-lab experience includes cell resuscitation, confocal microscopy, tissue cryopreservation for snRNA-Seq and Visium spatial transcriptomics, dead cell removal and flow cytometry.

Kelly Rangel, BS, MS

Research Assistant IV

Kelly completed her MS from University of Cincinnati in 2021 and has been with the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center Single Cell Genomics Core for over six years and has successfully handled thousands of single-cell samples using two different platforms: the Fluidigm C1 instrument and the 10x Genomics Chromium and Chromium X Controllers. Her primary responsibilities are to assess the quality of single-cell / nuclear suspensions, educate researchers about suspension quality, provide guidance on how to procure protocol compliant samples, and conduct single-cell assays. She is also proficient in scRNA-Seq, scATAC-Seq and Multiome ATAC + gene expression experiments. She is also adept with techniques such as CITE-seq, hashing (both antibody and lipid), and CRISPR screens and routinely provide one- to -one consultations to researchers on how these techniques function and aids in their experimental design. In addition to single-cell technologies, she has performed bulk RNA-seq assays, quality control and QPCR assays, designed and conducted experiments with multi-color (10+ fluorophores) panels using spectral flow cytometry.

Shawn Smith, BS, MS

Senior Research Assistant

Shawn completed his MS in biological sciences in June 2002 from University of Cincinnati and started his position at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center Single Cell Genomics Core facility in July 2002. He has over 20 years of experience in genomic technologies including microarray technology utilizing the Affymetrix GeneChip platform, assays from Tecan Genomics, Takara, and Illumina to process bulk RNA-Seq samples with limited amounts of starting material. For the last five years he has been performing single cell assays from 10x Genomics and Fluidigm platforms for all Cincinnati Children's projects. For 10x Genomics platform, he has expertise in processing samples using the Next GEM 3’v3.1 and 5’v1.1 kits, scATAC-Seq and the single cell Multiome assays. He has extensive experience in CITE-seq, TCR and BCR enrichment reaction using Feature Barcoding technology for investigators using antibody or lipid cell hashing.