The overarching goal of my research is to understand how the immune cells in our barrier tissues—our skin, gut, and lungs—protect us from infection but also promote inflammatory disease. I have led high-impact peer-reviewed studies in multiple fields including inflammatory airway disease, gut microbiome, and skin infection and inflammatory disease. My work has led to the identification of several novel therapeutic targets, and I have given invited talks at numerous national and international scientific meetings.
In between my undergraduate and graduate education, I worked as a research associate in the lab of Dr. Taylor Doherty, M.D. at UC San Diego. There, I conducted independent research investigating the mechanisms underlying allergic airway inflammation using a combination of mouse models, clinical samples, and high parameter flow cytometry. During the five years I spent in the Doherty lab, I made several important contributions to the lung immunology field including the identification of unconventional group 2 innate lymphoid cells (Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 2019).
As a first-year graduate student, I completed a research rotation in the laboratory of Dr. Rob Knight, Ph.D. wherein I led an investigation into the effect of sample storage on fecal microbiome composition using 16S rDNA and shotgun metagenomic sequencing (mSystems 2021).
In 2020, I joined the laboratory of Dr. Richard Gallo, M.D. Ph.D. to complete my Ph.D. thesis. The aim of my dissertation was to increase the understanding of the complex cellular communication network underlying skin immunity, with a focus on the role of fibroblasts. Dermal fibroblasts are appreciated for supporting tissue architecture and scar formation but have historically been ignored in terms of immunology. Overall, my dissertation unveiled the pivotal role of dermal immune acting fibroblasts (IAFs) in orchestrating skin immunity. Using a combination of bioinformatics, in vitro systems, murine models, and clinical samples, this work provided unprecedented insight into the intricate cellular communication network underlying skin inflammation and host defense. My findings, published in part in the Journal of Experimental Medicine in 2024, contributed significantly to our understanding of immunology and laid the groundwork for the development of novel treatments for infectious and inflammatory diseases.