Umetsu Laboratory

Umetsu Laboratory Alumni

	Daliya Banerjee, PhD Research Fellow Dr. Daliya Banerjee is working as a post-doctoral research fellow in the lab of Dr. Dale T. Umetsu at Children's Hospital Boston in Harvard Medical School. Dr. Banerjee received her B.S. in Chemistry and M.S. in Biochemistry from Calcutta University, India. In the year 2000, Dr. Banerjee came over to US to do her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA under the guidance of Dr. Ranjan Sen.
	Guangwu Chen, PhD Visiting Post-Doctoral Fellow Dr. Guangwu Chen received his PhD in Bioorganic Chemistry from Technische Universitaet Clausthal in Germany. He finished his thesis "New Neo-aminodeoxyoligosaccharides with Nucleic Acid Binding Properties" at the end of 2000. After moving to New York, Dr. Chen joined Prof. R. W. Franck's group at CUNY as a postdoc research associate and has since developed two effective strategies for library construction of immuno-potential alpha-C-galactosylceramide analogues. Since the end of October 2006, he moved to Prof. D. T. Umetsu laboratory as a visiting postdoc to gain experiences in studying allergic asthma.
	Rajashri Shuba Iyengar, MD MPH Clinical Fellow Dr. Rajashri Shuba Iyengar is a Clinical Allergy/Immunology Fellow working in the laboratory of Dr. Dale Umetsu. She received her medical degree from Duke University, completed a residency in Pediatrics at Stanford University, and joined Dr. Umetsu's laboratory in July 2006 as part of her Clinical Fellowship.
	Matthew Kan, AB Research Technician Matthew Kan was an undergraduate at Harvard College in the Umetsu Laboratory from 2003-2008. He began his research with the lab in 2003 through the Stanford Center for Clinical Immunology Summer Student Intern Program, prior to the lab's move to Harvard. He completed his Senior Honors Thesis regarding the role of chemokines in the trafficking of iNKT cells to the airways during asthma and graduated cum laude from Harvard in 2007. Following his graduation, Mr. Kan continued his studies in the lab as a Research Assistant, and served as a Teaching Assistant to Dr. Hidde Ploegh for the undergraduate immunology course at Harvard, and Tour Manager for the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra's Bicentennial Tour of South Korea. He is currently an M.D., Ph.D. candidate at Duke University School of Medicine.
	Piia Karisola, PhD Research Fellow Dr. Piia Karisola graduated and got her PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Jyv?skyl?, Finland in 2004. Her thesis dissertation was entitled "Immunological characterization and engineering of the major latex allergen, hevein (Hev b 6.02)." Dr. Karisola joined the Umetsu lab in May 2005, and she is now working on the immunological function of mouse Tim-1 and Tim-4 proteins.
	Youngil I. Koh, MD, PhD Research Fellow Dr. Youngil I. Koh received his MD in 1991 and his PhD in 1997 from Chonnam National University in Gwangju, Korea. He was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Asthma and Allergy at Chonnam National University Medical School. Dr. Koh's research interest is Asthma and Allergic Diseases, specifically the roles of T-cells. Currently, Dr. Koh's projects include studying the involvement of NKT cells in asthma pathophysiology.
	Srividya Subramanian, PhD Research Fellow Dr. Srividya Subramanian received a Ph.D. in Immunology from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in the summer of 2005. Her Ph.D. work was conducted under the supervision of Dr. Edward K. Wakeland and focused on understanding how epistatic interactions led to the suppression of the autoimmune disorder Systemic Lupus Erythematosus using murine models. Dr. Subramanian finalized some of this work as a post-doctoral researcher in the Wakeland lab, and then moved to Boston to work as an Immunology Research Fellow in the lab of Dr. Dale T. Umetsu at Children's Hospital of Boston in the spring of 2006.
	Heather K. Ward, PhD Research Fellow Dr. Heather K. Ward received her Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Pathology from the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004. She moved from her native Southern California to Boston to join the Umetsu lab in the winter of 2005. Dr. Ward's research interests include the role of viral infection in the development of airway tolerance and the role of co-stimulatory molecules in asthma.
	Takahiro Yasumi, MD, PhD Research Fellow Dr. Takahiro Yasumi received both his MD and PhD degree as well as his pediatric clinical training from Kyoto University. In September of 2005, Dr. Yasumi started his postdoctoral fellowship in the Umetsu Lab. His interests include pediatric allergic and immunological diseases with an emphasis in tolerance induction. Currently, Dr. Yasumi's projects include studying the involvement of NKT cells in asthma pathophysiology.