People in the Boyle Lab
Current Lab Members:
Jon did his postdoctoral work with John Boothroyd at Stanford University, and joined the department as an Assistant Professor in 2008. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2015 and then to full Professor in 2022. Link to Jon's CV.
Hisham joined the lab in May, 2020 and is a member of the MCDB PhD program. He studies Toxoplasma effectors and how they manipulate the host cell to promote T. gondii pathogenesis.
NyJaee joined the lab in May, 2021 and is a member of the MCDB PhD program. He studies how Toxoplasma gondii senses changes in its environment using the Toxoplasma/Hammondia hammondi system.
Mackenzie is an undergraduate researcher in our lab who helps keep our lab running smoothly and works with Sarah Reilly to study Toxoplasma and Hammondia hammondi stage conversion
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Rafaela joined the lab as a Postdoctoral Fellow in January of 2021. She brings her long-standing interest and expertise in Toxoplasma-placenta interactions to our lab and uses a variety of animal and in vitro models to study placental resistance to T. gondii
Leah joined the lab in May, 2020 and is a graduate student in the MCDB PhD program. She studies Toxoplasma-placenta interactions with a focus on how this parasite might manipulate differentiation and development in this critical organ.
Sarah Reilly joined the lab as a Research III technician in May of 2021. She is working on a number of projects in the lab, including understanding how Toxoplasma factors influence stage conversion.
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Lab Alumni:
Elizabeth was a research technician in our lab from June, 2016-August, 2018. She studied how T. gondii alters chemokine production in host cells and identified the T. gondii effector that specifically induces production of the chemokine CCL22 from human and mouse placental cells.
Stephanie was a PhD student in Carolyn Coyne's lab in the department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. We collaborated with her on Toxoplasma/Placenta interactions.
Sarah was an undergraduate in the lab and worked with Elizabeth English on the role of MAF1 and Toxoplasma pathogenesis. She left our lab to pursue her graduate studies at Cornell!
Rachel finished her PhD studies in our lab in 2020 when she studied differences in the host response to closely-related parasites like Toxoplasma gondii and Neospora caninum. She is now a Postdoctoral Fellow in Ellen Robey's Lab at Berkeley.
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Sarah got her PhD in our lab in 2021 studying the genetic bases for differences in pathogenesis between Toxoplasma gondii and Hammondia hammondi. She is now working full time in a local Pittsburgh biotech company.
Matt was a graduate student in the MCDB PhD program and graduated in March, 2020. He worked on understanding T. gondii manipulates host mitochondria and identified multiple host mitochondria associated proteins that were required for this process.
Sheen got her PhD at the University of Queensland in Chemical and Biological Sciences. She was in the lab as a postdoc from January, 2017-December 2020 and studied differences in the host response between Toxoplasma gondii and Hammondia hammondi.
Nicolas was a visiting research scholar from Bogata, Colombia. He worked with Rachel on Neospora/Toxoplasma comparisons and gene duplications.
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Other Lab Photos:
Name |
Position |
Start/End Date |
Subsequent
Positions (current listed last) |
Tracy Meehan |
Undergraduate |
Jan. 2009-Aug. 2010 |
PhD, Boston College;
Postdoctoral Fellow Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center |
Gargi Bhattacharyya |
Postdoctoral
Fellow |
Aug.
2009-June 2010 |
Research
Fellow, Utah State University |
Suman Sajjan |
Undergraduate |
Aug. 2009-May 2010 |
M.S., Johns Hopkins
University; Research Analyst, U.S. Army. |
Heather Ross |
Undergraduate |
May 2010-May 2012 |
Medical Student |
Katelyn Walzer |
Undergraduate and Research
II Technician |
Aug. 2011-June 2012 |
Ph.D. Student, Duke
University |
Edwin Kamau |
Research II Technician |
Oct. 2008-Jan. 2013 |
Ph.D. Student, NYU University |
Mark Brown |
Research II Technician |
Feb. 2010-March 2013 |
Research III Technician,
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine |
Rachel Dam |
Undergraduate |
May 2011-April 2013 |
Research Technician, Baylor College of
Medicine; PhD Student, University of Washington |
Hannah Wand |
Undergraduate |
Jan. 2012-June 2013 |
Research Technician, Stanford
University School of Medicine; M.S. Student, Johns Hopkins/NIH Joint Program
in Genetics Counseling |
Yaw Adomako-Ankomah |
Graduate Student |
May 2009-Dec., 2013 |
Postdoctoral Fellow, National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH. |
Adair Borges |
Undergraduate |
May 2012-Aug. 2014 |
Ph.D. Student, University of
California-San Francisco |
Ananth Srinivasan |
Undergraduate |
Jan.
2011-Aug. 2014 |
PhD.
Student, University of Pennsylvania |
Greg Wier |
Graduate Student |
May 2010-May 2015 |
Applying for Teaching/Research
Positions |
Jon Harper |
Undergraduate |
Sept.
2013-May 2015 |
Emergency
Medical Technician |
Elizabeth English |
Graduate Student |
May 2012-January 2017 |
Postdoctoral Fellow, Boris Striepen’s Lab, University of Pennsylvania |
Preethi Sankaran |
Undergraduate |
Jan.
2015-May 2017 |
|
Emily Klonicki |
Undergraduate |
May 2015-Dec. 2015 |
Undergraduate, University of
Pittsburgh |
Sethu Nair |
Postdoctoral
Fellow |
Jan.
2016-Sept. 2017 |
Postdoctoral
Fellow, Johns Hopkins University. |
Colin Montessano |
Undergraduate |
Sept. 2015-April 2017 |