Josie Ni

Josie was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and grew up in Chicago. She received her undergraduate education from University of California, Berkley, and attended Medical School at Northwestern University. Josie did her Residency at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, where she was  selected as the curriculum Chief Resident, charged with creating a formal program curriculum.

Susan Lynch

Research in the Lynch laboratory addresses key areas of human microbiome research:

• Early-life microbiome assembly
• Community perturbation and reassembly
• Relationships between microbiome composition, function and chronic immune activation
• Development of rationally designed novel microbiome-based therapeutics
• The gut-airway axis

Sarkis K. Mazmanian

Sarkis Mazmanian is a medical microbiologist. He has been employed at the California Institute of Technology since 2006, and is currently the Louis & Nelly Soux Professor of Microbiology in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering. Before his current position, he was associated with the University of Chicago and Harvard Medical School. In 2012, Mazmanian was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for his pioneering work on the human microbiome. Mazmanian's research investigates the symbiotic relationship between beneficial bacteria and their hosts. In seminal work, Mazmanian discovered the first microbial molecule that has direct beneficial effects on mammals.

Jim Weston

Janet Jansson

Janet Jansson is the Division Director of Biological Sciences at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). She is also PNNL’s sector manager for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research’s Biological Systems Science Division. Before coming to PNNL (June 2014) she was a senior staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2007-2014) and headed the Ecosystems Biology Program for the Earth Sciences Division at the Berkeley Lab. She also held Adjunct Professor positions at UC Berkeley and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, from 2012-2014.

Mary Regan

Mary Regan has a strong clinical background in perinatal nursing, with specific training and expertise in bio informatics. She trained as a certified nurse midwife in the United Kingdom and spent over 19 years working as a perinatal nurse specialist where she gained considerable expertise in pregnancy related health issues. She has been the PI on many State-funded grants and has received NIH funding for a grant focused on women’s decision making about birth (R21 HD059074-01A1) and the vaginal microbiota in preterm birth (R01NR014826-02). The findings from the R21 have been presented internationally and multiple publications have disseminated the findings. The R01 is in its final year and to date over 200 women have been recruited from the birthing population in Baltimore and followed for six month through pregnancy and to the post part period. Dr. Regan works as an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Maryland. She serves on the board of Improving Birth.

Rachel Webster PhD

Maria Themeli PhD- CCA

Dr. Themeli studies cancer-fighting T cells, which may be genetically engineered with chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) or otherwise modified to augment their potency and persistence. She obtained her MD and PhD degrees from the University of Patras Medical School in Greece. During her postdoctoral studies, at MSKCC in Dr. Michel Sadelain’s lab, she focused her efforts on the use of induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC) to obtain mature, functional, antigen-specific T cells for cancer immunotherapy. She now runs her own research group at VUmc Cancer Center Amsterdam focusing on developing CAR-T cell therapies for hematologic malignancies and further improving the generation of “off the shelf”, antigen-specific stem cell-derived T lymphocytes with optimized features.

Dr Katy Rezvani, MD

Dr. Katy Rezvani was recruited to MD Anderson in 2012 as Professor of Medicine, Director of Translational Research and Medical Director of the GMP Facility. She was appointed Chief of the Section for Cellular Therapy in the Department of Stem Cell Transplantation in 2017. She is the Principal Investigator on numerous grants and trials. Dr. Rezvani is Specialty Chief Editor for the section of Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy for Frontiers in Immunology and an Associate Editor for Cytotherapy.  She has over 150 peer-reviewed publications related to Immunotherapy, Cellular Therapy and Hematology/Oncology and hematopoietic transplantation. She is on the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant (CIBMTR) clinical trials advisory committee, a member of the BMT CTN Cell and Gene Therapy and is on the organizing committees of the International Society of Cellular Therapy meeting and the Society for Natural Immunity NK 2018 meeting. Dr. Rezvani has served on the ZRG1 F10A (Physiology and Pathobiology of Cardiovascular and Respiratory Systems) NIH Study Section and is an ad hoc reviewer for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, Cancer research UK, The Medical Research Council UK, the Dutch Cancer Society and the Kay Kendall Leukaemia Fund. Dr. Rezvani has an active research laboratory program in transplantation immunology where the focus of her research group is to study the role of natural killer cells (NK) cells in mediating immunity against hematologic disorders such as acute leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes as well as solid tumors, and to understand the mechanisms of tumor-induced NK cell dysfunction. The goal of these studies is to develop strategies to enhance NK cell effector function against tumors by genetically engineering the cells to enhance their in vivo antileukemic activity and persistence. Dr. Rezvani’s research interests also involve using cytotoxic T cells (CTL) to treat viral and malignant diseases. She is the recipient of multiple grants and awards, including two RO1s from the National Cancer Institute, two Leukemia Lymphoma Society Translational Research Program, a Research Scholar Grant from the American Cancer Society and a number of foundation awards. Her laboratory program in transplant immunology has led to the approval and funding of a number of Phase I/II studies of immunotherapy in patients with hematologic malignancies as well as solid tumors such as glioblastoma. 

Luis Álvarez-Vallina

Luis Álvarez-Vallina attended Medical School at Oviedo University and completed a residency in Immunology at the Clínica Puerta de Hierro (Madrid). Luis earned a PhD in Immunology from the Autónoma University of Madrid and spent four years at the MRC Centre for Protein Engineering (Cambridge, UK). His work contributed to the first generation of CARs with costimulatory domains. Currently, he is Associate Professor at Aarhus University (Denmark) where he leads the Immunotherapy and Cell Engineering group. He is also heading the Cancer Immunotherapy Unit at Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre, and Director Immunology Chair Merck- Francisco de Vitoria University (Spain). His experience includes generation of multispecific antibodies, and the development of cancer immunotherapy strategies based on the adoptive transfer of genetically engineered cells secreting bispecific antibodies.