Jonathan Pitsch (he/him), MS
Bioinformatician
Colorado has always been home for Jon. He attended the University of Colorado Denver, earning a BS in Pure and Applied Physics in 2018, before going on to Colorado School of Mines, where he completed an MS in Quantitative Biosciences and Bioengineering in 2021. During his master's, Jon specialized in applying programming and machine learning to biological problems, and along the way he took on a variety of research and industry roles, including making impactful contributions to research in the Breuss Lab through his computational skills.
In 2025, Jon decided to pursue a long-time passion for game development, co-founding Xenophora Studios — an indie studio focused on making fun, relaxing mobile games.
Jared Graham (he/him), PhD
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Jared grew up in Omaha, Nebraska before leaving for Iowa State University to earn a Bachelor’s in Animal Science. Having found that veterinary school was not the path for him, Jared moved to Chicago to join Insight Medical Genetics. Here, he found his career path in working toward becoming a Clinical Medical Genetics and Genomics Laboratory Director. Jared then earned his PhD at the University of Nebraska Medical Center under the supervision of Dr. Karen Gould studying the role of Estrogen Receptor Alpha signaling in a mouse model of lupus disease. After successfully defending his dissertation, Jared joined the Breuss lab in June 2022 as a post-doctoral fellow.
In July 2023, Jared returned home to Omaha and rejoined the University of Nebraska Medical Center to pursue a tenure-track faculty position investigating the genetics of autoimmunity.
Sara Wirth (she/her), BS
Lab Manager- Research Services Senior Professional
Sara grew up in Washington state and moved to San Diego after high school to escape the rain. She graduated from the University of California San Diego in 2015 with a BS in Biology, emphasizing Physiology and Neuroscience, and went on to spend 12 years in California, including time in the Bay Area as a lab manager at Stanford University. Along the way, Sara worked in both industry and academia, building a wide range of lab experience, including in the Gleeson Lab at UCSD, where she and Martin worked together during his postdoc.
In 2021, Sara moved to Colorado to help Martin start his lab, drawn by her enjoyment of wearing multiple hats and solving problems from start to finish. She went on to earn her MS in Data Science from CU Boulder in 2025, and in 2026, stepped away from her role in the lab to pursue a new direction, driven by her commitment and a desire to contribute to meaningful, data-driven change.