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College of Life Sciences Biology
Piccolo Lab

People

Stephen R. Piccolo

Portrait photo of Stephen Piccolo
Stephen R. Piccolo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at Brigham Young University (BYU). He earned a B.S. degree in Management Information Systems from BYU in 2001 and then worked as a software engineer at Intel Corporation. In 2011, he received a PhD in Biomedical Informatics from the University of Utah (advised by Dr. Lewis J. Frey). From 2011-2014, he was postdoctoral researcher jointly at the University of Utah (Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, advised by Dr. Andrea H. Bild) and Boston University School of Medicine (Division of Computational Biomedicine, advised by Dr. W. Evan Johnson). He teaches classes on biology and bioinformatics.

Graduate Students

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Photo of Preston Raab

Preston Raab

Preston is a new PhD student, having completed his B.S. in computer science at BYU in April 2025. He is from Tri-Cities, Washington, home of PNNL, LIGO, and the Hanford nuclear site. He enjoys having a brother and sister in Provo at BYU, though they are transferring to UVU for the aviation and dental programs, respectively. Preston married his wife, Nora, in 2024, and now loves spending time at home with her playing board games, card games, and walking the beautiful neighborhoods and canyons of Provo. Preston is passionate about understanding data through visualization. He hopes to leverage statistics and machine learning to solve difficult computational biology problems, such as eliminating technical differences between datasets.
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Undergraduate Students

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Anna Tubbs

Anna Tubbs is an undergraduate studying Computer Science with an emphasis in Bioinformatics. She is a native of western Washington and suspects it was the beautiful greenery there that inspired her fascination with biology. Anna also loves logic and problem solving, and enjoys dancing and spending time with friends and family in her free time. She is eager to help others through her research.
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Garrett Wride

Garrett is an undergraduate studying Bioinformatics and International Development. Having lived in Missouri, Minnesota, Connecticut, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Bulgaria, he loves getting to know new people and learning about different cultures. After graduating from BYU, he is planning a pursuing an MD/MPH degree. He then hopes to be able to contribute to research that will help improve the health of individuals in under-resourced communities both domestically and abroad.
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Photo of Amanda Warren

Amanda Warren

Amanda Warren is an undergraduate majoring in Bioinformatics. She has lived all across the United States with the Air Force and served in the Brasil Vitória mission. She is passionate about learning new things, human disease research, and data analysis. Some projects she has been involved in include sex imputation for RNA datasets, removal of batch effects in RNA expression data, constructing the web app GeoFinder, and deep learning analysis of single-cell RNA sequencing data from Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma. In her free time, she enjoys running, board games, reading, hiking, and rappelling.
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Shu-Fei (Sophie) Lo

Sophie is an undergraduate studying molecular biology and a computer science minor. She is from Taiwan and also served her mission in Taiwan. She enjoys reading, music, and spending time with her family. Her plan is to pursue an immunology PhD after she finishes her bachelor's degree.
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Heidi Steadman

Heidi is an undergraduate studying bioinformatics. She is from the Washington, DC area and loves skiing, rock climbing, and her cats. She hopes to learn more about researching with bioinformatics and one day pursue a PhD that she can use in the field of medical research.
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Spencer Nadauld

Spencer is an undergraduate studying Genetics, Genomics, and Biotechnology. After graduating from BYU, he will be attending medical school to become a physician scientist through an integrated MD/PhD program. Outside of the lab, he loves cliff jumping, swimming, and any sort of sport, especially rugby.
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Jeremy Searle

I'm a Junior currently studying Bioinformatics. I grew up near Minneapolis MN and love how green nature is in Minnesota. I enjoy many different hobbies such as swing dancing, ceramics and frisbee golf.
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Lab Alumni

  • Alex Brown
  • Abby Muir
  • Harrison Oakes
  • Bryce Tolman
  • Ifeanyichukwu O. Nwosu (PhD graduate)
  • Grace (Salmons) Brown
  • Harlan Stevens
  • Tolulope Barbara Akinbo
  • Eliza (Kartchner) Homer
  • Emi Ford
  • Maren Callaway
  • Arwen Oakley
  • Aaron Fabelico
  • Badí Israel Quinteros
  • James Wengler
  • Carly Winegar
  • Daniel Tabler
  • Dustin B. Miller (PhD graduate)
  • Alyssa C. Parker
  • Zach Eliason
  • Landon Becker
  • Emme Tuft
  • Jérémie Johnson
  • Nathan Mella
  • Ashlie Johnson
  • Elizabeth Cook Anderson
  • Avery Bell
  • Erica Suh
  • Tyler Heaton
  • Jonathan B. Dayton (MS graduate)
  • Kimball Hill
  • Brandon Fry
  • Zac Ence
  • Michael Bradshaw
  • Louisa Dayton
  • Daniel Larson
  • Dallas Larsen
  • Benjamin Cookson
  • Nathan Golightly
  • Haley Hilton
  • Jeremy Gygi
  • Rex Sumsion
  • T. James Lee
  • Samantha Jensen
  • Evan Jones
  • Ashton Omdahl
  • Adam Hansen
  • Clarissa Farmer
  • Shelby Taylor
  • Anna Guyer
  • Mike Frampton
  • PJ Tatlow
  • Douglas Hawkes
  • Weston Bodily (MS graduate)
  • Adam Lee
  • Parker Hollingsworth
  • Hyrum Eddington