Raad Altawell

Raad Altawell was born and raised in As-Suwayda, in Bashan Mountain, and immigrated to the United States in 2016. He earned his B.A. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Rutgers University, where he conducted research in the laboratory of Dr. Mi-Hyeon Jang on the effects of chemotherapeutic agents on adult hippocampal neurogenesis in mice. Following graduation, he joined Dr. Nicholas Stavropoulos's laboratory at the Waksman Institute as a full-time researcher, where he investigated the molecular pathways and neural circuits that govern sleep in Drosophila melanogaster.

Raad is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Genetics at Yale University, working in the laboratory of Dr. Lynn Cooley. His dissertation research examines stop codon readthrough (SCR) in the Drosophila nervous system, with a particular focus on how tRNA modifications and tRNA abundance shape this non-canonical mode of translation. More broadly, he is interested in how translational recoding expands proteomic diversity and contributes to neuronal function.