Current Postdoctoral Scholars

Respiratory tract infections, particularly bacterial pneumonia, are one of the most common causes of death worldwide. Streptococcus pneumoniae exists as a major contributor to bacterial pneumoniae despite the introduction of antibiotics and vaccinations, with high risk for serious disease and death, especially in aged individuals. The initial immune response to S. pneumoniae is largely mediated by neutrophils, a short-lived innate immune cell, which can become dysfunctional with aging. My work focuses on understanding the normal response neutrophils elicit in response to S. pneumoniae.

The major goal of my research is to reveal the mechanisms of cancer initialization and development. For this aim, I use advanced computational algorithms to deeply analyze into multi-omics cancer genetic data.

The goal of my research is to identify factors involved in the survival and adaption of Toxoplasma gondii to different oxygen concentrations. Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular parasite that is estimated to infect more than 30 million people in the United States. Toxoplasma’s ubiquity in the population can be attributed to its ability to infect virtually any nucleated cell in warm-blooded animals. However, to infect and survive in diverse cell types and tissues, Toxoplasma must adapt to different environments. My research focuses on how Toxoplasma senses and responds to changing oxygen levels.

My research specifically focuses on unraveling the role of RESC(RNA Editing Substrate binding Complex) and accessory factors in the RNA editing process of Trypanosoma brucei.

The intracellular parasite Toxoplasma gondii undergoes diverse oxygen tensions over its life cycle. Parasites sporulate in the environment, where they are exposed to 21% oxygen. However, upon ingestion, parasites invade host cells, wherein oxygen levels can be as low as 0.5%. How does such a divergent organism sense this change in its surroundings, when it lacks the transcription factors present in higher eukaryotes? My research uses ‘omics technologies to look at the flow of this information through Toxoplasma - how are changing oxygen levels sensed, and what affect do they have on the biology of this early divergent eukaryote?

Catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) are one of the most common nosocomial infections worldwide and represents a significant healthcare burden. CAUTI is often a polymicrobial disease, where a patient is infected with multiple uropathogens. Thus, my research focuses primarily on investigations into the polymicrobial interactions occurring in CAUTI.

The goal of my research is to understand the mechanisms of stress sensing and adaptation in the human pathogen C. neoformans. After encountering temperature and oxidative stress from the human host, C. neformans rapidly reprograms its translatome, which is accompanied by a transient translational repression. We seek to understand how stress from the host results in translational repression in C. neoformans, and the subsequent signalling pathways that lead to remodeling the translatome to one which is stress responsive. 

My research focuses on the development of a cell-based drug screening system, aimed at identifying potential therapeutics for SARS-CoV-2.

My work focuses on characterizing protein-protein and protein-RNA interactions involved in RNA editing in the kinetoplastid parasite, Trypanosoma brucei.

My research focuses on developing algorithms and mathematical models to address biological problems. Major areas of interest include computational cancer genomics and sequence analysis.