Oscar Aguilar Afaro
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Dr. Aguilar was born in El Salvador, but due to a civil war, his family seeked asylum in Canada. He was raised in Ottawa, Ontario where he completed his B.Sc in Biochemistry and a M.Sc. with Prof. Ken Storey at Carleton University. He then completed his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto working with Prof. James Carlyle. For his Post-Doctoral training, he joined Prof. Lewis Lanier’s lab at UCSF and was later recruited as faculty. His lab studies natural killer (NK) cells, which are critical members of our immune system tasked with protecting us from viral infections and cancers. They are innate lymphocytes that use cell surface NK receptors to distinguish between self and non-self (or altered-self). If a target cell has been identified as harmful, NK cells release cytotoxic granules that directly kill the target cell. The NK field has greatly advanced our understanding of these cells however, there remain many outstanding questions. The Aguilar lab is working to fill in some of these gaps.
Mark Ansel
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Mark Ansel is a Professor in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology. He is a co-founder of the Bakar ImmunoX Initiative, a new UCSF initiative to harness immunology to improve human health. His laboratory in the Sandler Asthma Basic Research Center focuses on the regulation of gene expression in the immune system. MicroRNAs (miRNA), RNA binding proteins (RBP), transcription factors, and epigenetic regulation shape the gene expression programs that determine cell identity and function. The Ansel lab studies how these molecular mechanisms work together to control lymphocyte development, differentiation, and function in immunity. We use in vitro cell differentiation systems, biochemistry, mouse genetics, disease models, and gene expression analyses in cells from human clinical samples to unravel the regulatory networks that underlie immunity and immune pathology, especially allergy and asthma.
Paola Betancur
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Dr. Paola Betancur is an expert in gene regulation and genomics. She is interested in understanding the mechanisms encoded in the DNA by which cancerous cells avoid being detected and destroyed by the host’s immune system. Toward this goal, her lab examines the interactions between epigenetic modifiers, transcription factors and the genomic enhancers of target genes that in response to inflammation abnormally activate the immune escape program within tumor or damaged cells during aging, after radiation and in response to infectious diseases. To accomplish our goal, she has long lasting collaborations across campus, at Stanford University and other recognized national and international institutions.
Gabriela Fragiadakis
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Gabi is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Rheumatology, and faculty member of ImmunoX, Benioff Center for Microbiome Medicine (BCMM), and the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute (BCHSI). She has expertise in computational immunology, single-cell analysis, and the microbiome. Her lab's research focus is understanding human immune states using single-cell methods across disease contexts including viral infection and autoimmunity. She's a firm believer in the power of team science and leads the UCSF Data Library project. Data Science CoLab (DSCoLab) integrates biological understanding and intuition with advanced skills in data science--facilitating close collaborations between experimental and computational biologists--which leads to projects that have greater impact than a single researcher can do in isolation.
Corey Harwell
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Dr. Corey Harwell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology. He is interested in understanding how the extensive morphological, molecular and functional diversity of neural cell types is achieved during development of the central nervous system. His lab studies the forebrain, with particular attention to the cortex and the septal nucleus of the basal forebrain. The Harwell Lab's long-term goal is to understand how genetic and epigenetic programs associated with a progenitor cells spatial and temporal identity dictates their fate choice. Dr. Harwell is also interested in understanding how these diverse groups of neurons and glia coordinate to assemble the precise circuitry of the mammalian forebrain.
Ryan Hernandez
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Dr. Ryan Hernandez is a Professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences. His research focuses on computational genomics and complements the department’s emerging strengths in quantitative sciences and genomics: First, he seeks to characterize the patterns of genetic variation within and between populations using large-scale genome resequencing data. A second branch of research in his lab focuses on developing novel population genetic simulation techniques. Such simulations are used to lend insight into the plausible evolutionary forces that have shaped patterns of genetic variation, including the implications of complex interactions among selected alleles in non-stationary demographic environments. His third branch of research seeks to exploit population genetic models of demographic history and natural selection to interrogate the genetic basis of disease. By capitalizing on recent theoretical advances, Dr. Hernandez is constructing models of population dynamics that will utilize genomic re-sequencing data to discover novel regions of the genome that underlie genetic susceptibility to disease and drug response.
Martin Kampmann
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Dr. Kampmann is an Associate Professor in the UCSF Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and the IND. Dr. Kampmann's research aims to understand how human cells maintain their proteins in a functional and balanced state. The cellular pathways safeguarding proteome function and balance are termed the "proteostasis network." Dr. Kampmann research will elucidate how the proteostasis network dynamically adapts to the needs of the cell and how it is challenged and rewired in diseases, especially cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Identification of proteostasis factors that control formation, spread, and clearance of protein aggregates associated with neurodegenerative diseases will shed light on the disease mechanisms and reveal potential therapeutic targets.
Todd Nystul
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Todd Nysul is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Anatomy and OB/GYN. The Nystul laboratory uses the Drosophila ovary as a model for studying the fundamental properties of epithelial stem cells, their associated niche, and the connection between epithelial stem cells and cancer. The follicular epithelium in the Drosophila ovary is an ideal model for the study of epithelial biology. It possesses many classical epithelial features, such as a columnar cell shape, apical/basal polarity, and canonical cell adhesion complexes, and yet is a relatively simple tissue and is highly tractable for molecular and cell biological analysis. Combined with the powerful genetic tools available in Drosophila, this allows us to address questions in epithelial stem cell and tissue biology with single-cell resolution in the natural, in vivo context.
Roberto Ricardo-Gonzalez
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Dr. Roberto R. Ricardo-Gonzalez serves as faculty in UCSF's graduate program in biomedical sciences and is an investigator at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network. The goal of his lab's research is to decipher how inflammation affects the skin, with a focus on dissecting how essential components of the tissue such as fibroblasts, endothelial cells, lymphatics, and others are individually affected during states of acute and chronic inflammation. We leverage our expertise in tissue biology, immunology, microscopy, and multi-omics analyses to perform assays that test physiologic functions of barrier tissues to uncover new insights into tissue homeostasis. In addition, we use models of adoptive transfer of ILCs to evaluate their therapeutic potential and determine how these cells can promote beneficial tissue inflammation or serve as adjuvant therapies against cancer. Finally, we aim to discover novel ways to manipulate detrimental immune-'niche' crosstalk to develop therapeutic interventions to ameliorate chronic inflammatory diseases.
Sam Pleasure
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Dr. Samuel J. Pleasure is a neurologist who specializes in caring for patients with multiple sclerosis. The Pleasure Lab works on mechanisms controlling development of the cortex and hippocampus. The focus has been on the roles of morphogenic and developmental signaling pathways on the stem cell behavior, cell fate, migration and axon guidance during embryonic and postnatal development. In this area, previous work focused on the roles of Wnt, chemokines and BMP signaling pathways in the developing cortex. More recently, this work has focused on the role of the Sonic Hedgehog pathway in cortical and hippocampal development and function. Dr. Pleasure is the Glenn W. Johnson, Jr. Memorial Endowed Chair in Neurology at UCSF.
Tiffany Scharschmidt
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Dr. Scharschmidt is a dermatologist, microbiologist, and immunologist and currently serves as a Professor and the Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Dermatology. She dedicates 80% of her time to research and the remaining time taking care of patients with severe inflammatory skin diseases. The central focus of her laboratory is to investigate the cellular and molecular mechanisms that mediate interactions between bacteria and the developing immune system, with a long-term goal of developing new therapeutic approaches based on this knowledge. Work in her lab leverages access to human samples, including human skin and blood, as well as corresponding microbiome samples to dissect the role of host-microbe crosstalk in normal cutaneous immune development and inflammatory skin disease. Her lab also employs a reductionist approach, utilizing sophisticated immunological and microbiological tools in murine models to ask fundamental questions about mechanisms mediating the innate and adaptive immune responses to bacteria in early life.
Jason Sello
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Jason K. Sello is a full professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Prior to his appointment at UCSF, Prof. Sello was a professor in the department of chemistry at Brown University. Professor Sello develops chemical tools to probe the complex phenomena underlying disease. He has been synergistically using experimental methods from chemistry, biophysics, biochemistry, and genetics to study biological phenomena and to develop new therapeutics for infections, cancer, and neurological disorders. He has also worked on technologies for the conversion of plant biomass into commodity chemicals.
Anita Sil
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Anita Sil is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and an Early Career Scientist of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She has been studying thermally dimorphic fungi for 15 years. Dr. Sil’s efforts in genomics and molecular genetic analysis have been internationally recognized, resulting in her role as co-chair or chair of six international conferences on fungal pathogenesis. She continues to study the unique biology of thermally dimorphic fungi in an effort to challenge existing paradigms and shed light on how a eukaryotic intracellular pathogen has evolved to sense temperature and cause disease in healthy individuals.
Matthew Spitzer
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Matthew Spitzer is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and Microbiology & Immunology and an investigator of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. His research how immune cells communicate with one another to decide when to initiate an immune response, how to carry it out, and when to shut it down and return to homeostasis. In order to understand these properties of the immune system, Dr. Spitzer's lab uses systems immunology techniques including single-cell analysis, blending experimental and computational approaches to understand the complex circuits and regulatory processes that guide our immune systems to make decisions.
Dan Wagner
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Dan Wagner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ob/Gyn and Reproductive Sciences. He strives to understand the cause of developmental defects and miscarriages in human pregnancies. At present, it's unknown why certain perturbations result in failed embryogenesis in some individuals, but not in others. Dr. Wagner's research seeks to understand feedback mechanisms that could offer cell fate and tissue pattern robustness, and the disease states that arise when these mechanisms fail. Studies are conducted in the zebrafish (Danio rerio), whose embryos can be studied with a wide variety of reverse genetic, lineage-tracing, imaging, and molecular tools, along with single-cell genomics methods to map quantitative relationships between cell lineage and cell state, in both healthy and perturbed contexts.