Oettgen Laboratory

Diana Kombe, BA

I joined Dr. Oettgen’s Laboratory in September 2008. Currently, I am working in the derivation of our TSLP transgenic line. I am also working closely with our post-doc fellows by assisting them in their particular projects: mouse models of food allergy, early basophils’ response to inhaled aeroallergens, and pathogenesis of eczema vaccinatum.

I received my BA in Human Ecology and Biology in June 2006 from College of the Atlantic, where I was recognized as a United World College Davis Scholar and awarded a four-year full tuition scholarship. During my undergraduate education, I worked at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, examining the role of growth hormone deficiency in age related Type II Diabetes in mice. Upon graduating, I worked as a Research Technician at The Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT in Boston examining the effects of beta-glucan exposure in Candida albicans during infection and treatment.

I plan to further my career in the coming years by going to graduate school. I am particularly interested in health care management and public health, and would like to fuse business and science to establish a health business model that will help in disease diagnosis in my home country, Tanzania.