Team
The Spatial Technologies Unit is staffed by dedicated, full-time personnel - a faculty-level Scientific Director and Senior Scientist, an Operations Manager, and computational biologists - assigned to the unit and not shared with other labs or institutional structures.
Director
Ioannis Vlachos, Ph.D.
Ioannis Vlachos, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Director of the Spatial Technologies Unit of the HMS Initiative for RNA Medicine. He also directs the Bioinformatics Unit of the Precision RNA Medicine Core, co-directs the Bioinformatics Program of the Cancer Research Institute (CRI), is a Member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, and is Associate Faculty of the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard.
Dr. Vlachos' research focuses on the use of cutting-edge technologies for reverse translation - including bulk, single-cell, and spatial tissue profiling - to inform clinical decision-making, and on developing AI/ML methodologies for data integration and biomarker prioritization. He established the Spatial Technologies Unit with support from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and the HMS Initiative for RNA Medicine, and works to transform research-focused spatial technologies into robust, automated, production-grade methods. In 2023 he co-founded the Global Alliance for Spatial Technologies (GESTALT) to support worldwide standards in the field.
Scientific Director
Shuoshuo Wang, Ph.D.
Shuoshuo Wang serves as Scientific Director of the STU at BIDMC, where he works on the development and implementation of spatial and molecular technologies for human tissue research. He is also an Associate Member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
His research spans molecular and cell biology, mechanobiology, genome organization, quantitative imaging, single-cell genomics, spatial biology, and molecular pathology. At the STU, his work focuses on tissue preservation, assay development and optimization, reproducibility, spatially resolved pathology, and molecular methods. Across these areas, he examines how biological information is preserved from specimen preparation through molecular measurement, imaging, computational analysis, and interpretation, with an emphasis on developing and evaluating technologies for tissue-based research workflows.
He serves on the editorial boards of the National Society for Histotechnology (NSH) and the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), reviews grants for the American Heart Association (AHA), and has served as an ad hoc reviewer for more than 20 journals spanning cell and developmental biology, molecular biology, pathology, cancer, and translational research, including Nature Communications, Cell Stem Cell, Developmental Cell, Molecular Therapy, Laboratory Investigation, Human Pathology, and the American Journal of Pathology.
Senior Scientist
Athanasios Ploumakis, Ph.D.
Athanasios Ploumakis is an Instructor at Harvard Medical School and Senior Scientist within the Spatial Technologies Unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He earned his MBiochem in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham in 2018, studying the role of 2-oxoglutarate-dependent oxygenases in translational termination. He subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Broad Institute, focusing on the multi-omic characterization of brain tissue affected by multiple sclerosis. Since joining BIDMC in 2021, his work has focused on the application and advancement of spatial and multi-omic technologies to investigate tissue biology and disease.
Operations Manager
Owen Mulledy
Owen Mulledy is the Operations Manager for the Spatial Technologies Unit. In addition to running single-cell and spatial assays at the bench, he oversees projects and works with investigators from initial consultation through project delivery. He brings extensive experience in genomics and transcriptomics laboratory settings.
Spatial Computational Biology Lead
Sheethal Umesh Nagalakshmi
Sheethal oversees the Computational Biology portfolio of the Spatial Technologies Unit and establishes best practices for the analyses of every single assay performed in the STU. She has extensive experience across all single-cell and spatial tissue profiling modalities offered in the unit, and expertise in efficient data analysis and integration. She has also worked as a lead analyst in large projects, including the Human Biomolecular Atlas Project (HuBMAP) and R01- and P01-funded studies.