Temporal Dynamics of Immune Responses

Demi received her B.S. in Biology from Louisiana Tech University, where she worked in Dr. Jamie Newman’s lab studying cell signaling pathways in human stem cells. She then worked for three years as a research technician in Dr. Tyler Jacks’ lab studying tumor immunology in genetically engineered mouse models of cancer. In the Spitzer and Rutishauser labs, Demi is using mouse models and human T cells to study the transcriptional and regulatory programs involved in CD8 T cell development and differentiation. Demi is supported as an NIH Fellow by the UCSF Biomedical Sciences NIH Training Grant.

Elizabeth McCarthy is a graduate student in the Bioinformatics program. She is co-mentored with the Jimmie Ye and is also a student in the UCSF MSTP program. Her research focuses on longitudinal studies of immune responses in humans to a disease or treatment. Her main questions focus on gaining biological insight through following trajectories overtime and on building predictive models to better understand drivers of particular outcomes. Elizabeth is supported by an NIH F30 Fellowship.

Joel received his M.S. at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris and his Ph.D. in immunology at Paris Descartes University. There, he trained under the direction of Loredana Saveanu in the basic biology of Dendritic cells and Toll like receptors, using mouse models and confocal microscopy to identify how endosomal compartmentalization of TLR9 is responsible for the regulation of the immune response. After completing his Ph.D., he moved his interest toward cancer research in Olivier Hermine lab at IMAGINE institute where he worked as a postdoc on the effects of an experimental cancer immunotherapy strategy that reprogram tumor infiltrating mononuclear phagocytes. As a postdoctoral scholar in the Spitzer lab, he is focusing on cancer immunity and immunotherapy responsiveness in cancer patients and the interplay between the immune system and the commensal microbiota. Joël is supported as part of his UCSF Bakar ImmunoX CoProject.

Lauren received her A.B. in the Biological Sciences with a Specialization in Immunology at the University of Chicago, where she studied mechanisms of linear differentiation of CD8 memory T cells during LCMV infection in the laboratory of Dr. Philip Ashton-Rickardt. Over the course of her medical training at New York Medical College and Washington University in St. Louis in the laboratories and clinics of Drs. Jedd Wolchok and Gerald Linette, she studied innate and adaptive immune responses to diverse therapeutic strategies for melanoma including TLR9 and OX40 agonists and dendritic cell vaccination. As a fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Matthew Spitzer, she currently researches the contribution of systemic immune homeostasis in the successful rejection of solid tumors. Lauren has been supported by an ASCO Women Who Conquer Cancer Young Investigator Fellowship

Maya received her B.A. in Biology from Wesleyan University, where she studied transgenerational epigenetic plasticity in Dr. Sonia Sultan's lab. After graduating, she worked for two years as a Staff Research Associate at UCSF in Dr. Tammy Chang's lab investigating how a tissue ablation technique called non-thermal irreversible electroporation (IRE) modulates the immune environment and promotes matrix remodeling. Currently, she is a UCSF BMS graduate student in the Spitzer lab studying systemic immune cell interactions in the context of cancer and infection. Maya is supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.