Ahmad Hosseinzadeh: As the PI of this group, I study problems at the interface of physics, structural biology, data science, and machine learning. My current areas of research include ultrafast structural dynamics of proteins and protein complexes using experimental data from X-ray free electron lasers, structural variations of biomolecules using X-ray and electron microscopy data, as well as developing data-analytic algorithms to extract accurate information from data in biophysics and related disciplines.
Ryan LeFebre: Dr. LeFebre is a postdoctoral scholar currently working on studying phytochrome protein structural conformations and dynamics using time-resolved X-ray crystallography data. In general, he has a strong interest in data-driven science and applying machine learning techniques to solve hard problems. Before coming to UWM, Ryan studied cellular sensing and communication at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.
Adam Opperman: Adam is a Ph.D. student working in materials science with a focus on Lithium-ion batteries. His project focuses on Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy and other material characterization techniques, and how they can be used to assess electrochemical cell performance. He applies machine learning techniques for analyzing his data. Adam’s work is done in cooperation with COnovate Inc., a Milwaukee-based startup company creating biocarbon-based eCOphite Materials for battery applications.
Umeshika Dissanayaka: Umeshika is a graduate student in physics with a bachelor’s degree in computational physics from the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka. Her research interests lie in computational biophysics, where she applies physics-based methods and data analysis tools to explore complex biological systems at the molecular level. Umeshika’s project is in the area of protein dynamics and conformations using X-ray and electron microscopy data.
Suresh Golla: Suresh has a master’s degree in computer science from UWM. He works on developing and optimizing a software package for analyzing SAXS data generated by CXFEL tools. His interests include integrating machine learning in software development processes and finding algorithmic solutions with suitable data structures in Java and Python.
Alumni:
Justin Trujillo: Dr. Trujillo was a graduate student working in the areas of experimental and computational structural biology. He contributed to various projects, such as resolving data incompleteness issues in time-resolved X-ray crystallography experiments and investigating protein functions by analyzing their interaction with other proteins using fluorescence microscopy data. Justin graduated in the summer of 2025 with a Ph.D. degree in physics.
Sara Zangana: Sara was a master’s student with a bachelor’s degree in physics from Queen Mary University of London in England. Her master’s project was about the applications of machine learning in time-resolved crystallography. She graduated in the summer of 2025 with an M.Sc. degree in physics.
Shanghui Huang: Dr. Huang was a postdoctoral research associate from 2023 to 2025. He worked on a data analytical platform for the compact X-ray free-electron laser (CXFEL), which is under construction at Arizona State University. Shanghui currently works as an automation engineer in Foxconn Industrial Internet in Chicago.
Evan Kania: Evan was an undergraduate student at UWM, who worked as a volunteer research assistant in my group. His project focused on single-particle imaging using X-ray diffraction. He graduated in Spring 2025 with a bachelor’s degree in physics and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in quantum computing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Yasaswy N. Chintagunta: Yasaswy was a master’s student in computer science, graduated in December 2024. His project was about developing an AI tool for autonomus experimentation at CXFEL, in collaboration with the CAMERA group at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
Roshanak Etemadpour: Dr. Etemadpour was a postdoctoral research associate in 2024 and studied the structural variabilities of biomolecules by analyzing electron microscopy data. Roshanak is now a postdoc at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, affiliated with Harvard Medical School.
Zoey Nielsen: Zoey was a 2024 BioXFEL scholar at UWM-Physics. She worked on creating a software package to preprocess X-ray diffraction data from time-resolved crystallography experiments. Zoey is interested in computational science and using linear algebra to solve data analytic problems. Zoey is now a senior student at the University of California – Santa Barbara in the College of Creative Studies pursuing a double major in mathematics and computation.
Bismah Hasan: Bismah was a BioXFEL Scholar from the City College of New York in 2023. At UWM, she studied the structure of a protein, called photosystem II, using X-ray emission spectroscopy snapshots and a data-driven machine learning approach. Bismah is currently a graduate student in data science at Boston University in Massachusetts and works as a Machine Learning Data Operations Associate at Amazon.
Jenna Vesey: Jenna was a BioXFEL scholar at UWM in 2023. She studied bioinformatics and neuroscience at Ramapo College of New Jersey. Jenna’s project involved selecting single-particle X-ray diffraction snapshots from large experimental XFEL data. Her project was presented at the 2023 LCLS Users’ Meeting at Stanford and received the Joe Wong Award. Jenna is now a PhD student in biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Pranav Manjapra: Pranav was an undergraduate BioXFEL scholar from the University of California – Santa Cruz in 2020. His project was about developing a graphical user interface for structure determination of biomolecules from X-ray data. He currently works as a Data Infrastructure Engineer at Empirico Inc. in California.
Yusuf Ahmad: Yusuf was an undergraduate BioXFEL scholar from Lewis University in Illinois in 2019. He worked on artifact reduction in X-ray images using data-analytic methods. At present, Yusuf is a medical student in Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Pennsylvania.
