233 South 10th Street
BLSB, Room 306
Philadelphia, PA 19107
Galen Rask, MS
Lab Manager
Research Project: Galen earned his Bachelor’s in Biology at Swarthmore College. He then earned his M.S. at the Ohio State University studying the formation of the pollen cell wall in plants. He has since studied renal disease and pediatric cancer before joining the Goldsmith lab. Aside from his lab managerial roles, Galen works on mitochondria-ER contact sites and their possible role in cargo inclusion of autophagosomes in neurodegenerative diseases.
Dorothy Benton, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Research Project: Dorothy earned her B.S. in Biology at Ursinus College and her PhD in Molecular, Cellular Biology, and Genetics at Drexel University College of Medicine. Her PhD thesis lab was at Fox Chase Cancer Center. She joined the Goldsmith Lab in 2025 and is studying the effect of ALS-associated mutations on mitochondrial dynamics and autophagy in iPSC-derived neurons.
Khalil T.J. Rust
PhD student in Neuroscience
Research Project: Khalil earned his B.S. in Neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University. After graduating in 2019, he worked in the Maragakis Lab at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, studying the role of astrocytes in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. In 2024, he moved on to start his PhD at Thomas Jefferson University. As a member of the Goldsmith and Philp labs he is studying the disease risk associations of APOE variants by investigating how they affect the homeostatic and supportive functions of iPSC-derived astrocytes and retinal pigment epithelium.
Cassandra L. Mikkelson
PhD Student in Neuroscience
Research Project: Cassandra earned her B.S. in Custom-Design Neuroscience and minor in Psychology at Drexel University. While she was an undergraduate student, she has worked as a research assistant at Thomas Jefferson University, University of Pennsylvania, and Century Therapeutics. Upon graduating in 2024, she started her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Thomas Jefferson University. As a member of the Goldsmith Lab, she is investigating the relationship between inflammatory activation and canonical and non-canonical autophagy in healthy and disease associated human iPSC-derived microglia.
