OTRL Team

Current Members

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  Purva Singh, PhD

  Assistant Director, Osteoarthritis Translational Research Laboratory

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  Samantha Lessard, BA

  Supervisor, Molecular Histopathology Core Laboratory

  Samantha obtained her B.A. in Chemistry, Cell and Molecular Biochemistry from Colby College (Waterville, ME) and worked at Boston Children’s Hospital (Boston, MA) as Research Technician before joining HSS in 2016. Samantha is the Supervisor of the HSS Molecular Histopathology Core Laboratory, where she trains staff and oversees user-driven equipment, and performs tissue processing and analyses. Samantha conducts osteoarthritis-centered research at the Otero Lab, in studies involving retrieval, processing and multimodal analyses of tissues of human and murine origin.  

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  Christopher Finck, BS

  Senior Research Technician, Osteoarthritis Translational Research Laboratory

  Christopher obtained his BS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, with a minor in Mathematics, from the Northeastern University (Boston, MA). He has worked as Research Assistant in the MacRae Laboratory (Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA), as Science Research Mentor at the American Museum of Natural History in NY, and as IHC & Sample Management Technician at HistoWiz before joining HSS in December of 2025. At the Otero Lab, Christopher manages processing and biobanking of clinical samples, and is conducting experiments aimed at evaluating the chondrogenic potential of different cells.