Troy Hornberger: Principle Investigator
Started the lab at UW-Madison in 2007. Loves everything about skeletal muscle and trying to figure out how mechanical signals regulate its size.
Marius Meinhold: Postdoctoral Fellow
Marius did an intern in the lab 2023 and then officially joined the lab in 2024 after receiving his Ph.D. from the Technical University Munich. Marius is passionate about the mechanisms that regulate skeletal muscle growth and his current project is using our weight pulling model to determine whether resistance exercise can serve as a safe and effective therapy for skeletal muscles that are impacted by facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD).
Hector Paez: Postdoctoral Fellow
Hector joined the lab in the Fall of 2024 after obtaining his PhD from the University of Tennessee. He was recently awarded an F32 for a project that is focused on the potential role that a protein called skNAC plays in the mechanical regulation of skeletal muscle mass. He is also planning to use skNAC as bait in a method that should enable him to identify novel exercise regulated kinases.
Jared Hartung: Postdoctoral Fellow
Jared joined the lab in the summer of 2026 after earning his PhD in Kinesiology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His current work focuses on optimizing dual labeling of newly synthesized proteins using noncanonical amino acids and click chemistry–based reactions. He aims to apply this approach to investigate the concurrent synthesis and degradation of proteins across subcellular compartments under a variety of conditions.
Corey Flynn: Graduate Student
Ph.D. student in the CMB program that joined the lab in the fall of 2023. In 2024, Corey received a perfect score for an F31 proposal that is aimed at defining the role that MKK3 plays in the mechanical activation of mTORC1, protein synthesis, and skeletal muscle growth.
Isaac Hanauska: Graduate Student
Ph.D. student in the CBMS program that started working in the lab in the summer of 2026. He is particularly interested in understanding how skeletal muscle adapts to various types of exercise at the cellular and molecular level and his first major project will be focused on defining the role(s) that MMK4/7 play in these processes.
Madyson Janichek: Undergraduate
Madyson is an undergrad that is majoring in psychology. She joined the lab in 2025 as a Bio 152 student, and has “loved learning numerous wet lab techniques”. She is currently studying the role of skNAC in cellular growth and protein synthesis and we are trying to convince her to switch her major 🙂
Anthony Lange: Undergraduate
Tony is an undergraduate that is pursuing a double major in pharmacology/toxicology and biology. Tony joined the lab in the summer of 2023 and is studying the roles that myofibril hypertrophy and myofibrillogenesis play in the mechanically induced growth of skeletal muscle.
Yisi Yang: Undergraduate
Joined the lab in Fall of 2025 and is majoring in Bioengineering. Yisi’s current efforts are aimed at developing a better understanding of the role that skNAC plays in the regulation of longitudinal muscle growth and protein synthesis.
Matilde Santibanez: Undergraduate
Joined the lab in 2025 as a BIO152 student and made great progress in her bench skills. She is currently working with Corey Flynn and has been studying the role that MKK3 plays in the mechanical activation of mTORC1.
Trenton Owens: Undergraduate
Trenton joined the lab in 2025 as a part of his Bio 152 research project. He is pursuing a degree in biomedical engineering with plans to attend medical school. Trenton’s research is aimed toward understanding the role that ER stress plays in FSHD pathology, specifically analyzing markers of the unfolded protein response that could indicate cellular stress within the muscle.