Team
Principal Investigator
José Ordovás–Montañés, PhD
Jose grew up in a Spanish household within the Boston area, circling the perimeter with high school in Framingham, MA, college at Tufts University, and graduate studies in the Harvard Immunology program. During his undergraduate, Jose worked in human immunology labs at Biogen Idec, University College London, and Children’s Hospital Boston, where he focused on monogenic immune deficiencies. For his PhD work, Jose trained with Uli von Andrian, studying how the nervous system and the immune system function together as the principal sensory interfaces between the internal and external environments.
Due to his problem of reading a lot, having ignored epithelial cells, and wanting to return to the human system, he decided to take the plunge into the field of single cell genomics to be able to work on all cell types, all the time. As a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laboratory of Alex K. Shalek at MIT, the Broad, and the Ragon Institute, he began charting maps of human gut and airway, and discovered how human stem cells can be shaped by, and remember, inflammation. He was supported by a great team of undergraduate students, graduate students, and technicians.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Samuel Kazer, PhD
Sam is a joint postdoctoral fellow in the Ordovas-Montanes and von Andrian (HMS) labs interested in studying immune memory to viral infections at barrier tissues. Focusing on the upper respiratory tract, Sam’s research aims to characterize and functionally test epigenetic and metabolic mechanisms of trained immunity capable of protecting against viral infection.
After attending grades K-12 across four different states, Sam completed his B.A. at Columbia University, and graduate studies in the Department of Chemistry at MIT. Majoring in Chemical Physics at Columbia, his research applied non-linear spectroscopy to study enzyme-DNA and small-molecule-DNA interactions. At MIT and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT & Harvard, he trained with Alex Shalek, adapting low-input bulk and single-cell RNA-sequencing technologies for acute HIV infection samples to study longitudinal immune dynamics during the earliest stages of HIV disease. He plans to build on his interests in dynamic immune responses and the roles innate immune cells therein during his Postdoctoral Fellowship. Outside lab, Sam brews beer for friends and family, plays and hosts weekly bar trivia, and sits on the board of a science & technology summer camp.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Lillian Juttukonda, MD PhD
CDN Lead Computational Biologist
Marc Elosua-Bayes, PhD
Marc works in the Cell Discovery Network, where he aims to use the power of single-cell and spatially resolved technologies to provide precision medicine treatments. Using high-resolution technologies to interrogate biology, he wants to better understand disease-driving mechanisms, where a patient sits within the disease landscape, and how to effectively treat it. When not in the lab, he loves to be outdoors – trail running is his happy place – playing board games and watching wildlife documentaries.
Before moving to Boston, he majored in Biology and did an MSc in Bioinformatics for the Health Sciences at the UPF in Barcelona. During that time he was also working as a research assistant in the Ramos lab to understand the association between arterial stiffness and cardiovascular diseases. He then carried out his Ph.D. co-supervised by Dr. Ivo Gut and Dr. Holger Heyn at the CNAG, Barcelona. His Ph.D. work centered around developing computational tools to integrate single-cell and spatial transcriptomics technologies to better understand the tumor microenvironment.
PhD Candidate
Peter Lotfy
Peter comes to the lab from Southern California, where he grew up and attended UC San Diego (UCSD) for his BS (Physiology & Neuroscience) and MS (Biology) degrees. At UCSD, Peter worked with Larry Goldstein, modeling neurodegenerative diseases in human stem cell-derived neurons and glia and developing methods for performing genome-wide CRISPR screens in these cell types. He then joined the lab of Patrick Hsu at the Salk Institute, where, as a research technician, he contributed to the metagenomic discovery, characterization, and application of novel RNA-targeting CRISPR systems.
As a graduate student, Peter is interested in expanding on and integrating his background in genome editing, technology development, neurobiology, and stem cell biology to study mechanisms and potential therapeutic opportunities in inflammatory diseases. Outside of lab, Peter loves watching basketball, reading, and listening to podcasts.
PhD Candidate
Andrew Kwong
Andrew is a graduate student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program who is interested in defining how intercellular circuits are formed to maintain health and sustain inflammatory disease. Growing up in Toronto, Canada, he attended McMaster University where he majored in Biochemistry. Here, he worked with Patricia Liaw and investigated the mechanisms of neutrophil extracellular trap release and their involvement in the pathophysiology of sepsis. He spent a summer under Charlie Rice at The Rockefeller University where he explored the antiviral properties of stem cells.
Now, he is broadly interested in systems immunology. Outside of the lab, Andrew loves trying new recipes, reading and running.
PhD Candidate
Joshua de Sousa Casal
Josh is a grad student in the lab within the department of Immunology at Harvard Medical School. Prior to coming to the United States for school, Josh grew up just outside of the city of Toronto, Canada, in the small town of Stouffville, Ontario. For his undergraduate studies, he attended the University of Toronto where he did a specialist degree in immunology. During this time, he worked in the lab of Juan Carlos Zúñiga-Pflücker, and investigated the stromal signals involved in early T cell commitment and aided in the development of a new technology for the generation of T cells from various stem cell sources.
As a PhD student, Josh aims to continue his work to understand the role of stromal-immune cell cross talk, but in the context of barrier protection and chronic disease. He is extremely interested in understanding the role of the immune system in stromal development and how these interactions and environments change throughout life. Outside of science, Josh is an avid basketball fan and in his free time he enjoys sport climbing, reading, and baking a variety of breads.
PhD Candidate
Jaclyn Long
Jaclyn is a graduate student in the Harvard Immunology program and is jointly advised by Jose and Arlene Sharpe. She grew up in Massachusetts and attended Northeastern University for her undergraduate studies, where she completed degrees in Bioengineering and Biology. During her time at Northeastern, Jaclyn developed lymph node-on-a-chip models at the Wyss Institute, applied CRISPR gene editing to natural killer cell therapies at Editas Medicine, and studied CD8+ T cell dysfunction in tumors in the Sharpe Lab at HMS.
As a graduate student, she is interested in understanding how tissue metabolism influences T cells in infectious and inflammatory diseases. Jaclyn is also passionate about science communication and education outreach, and volunteers for Harvard’s Science in the News blog and the Health Professions Recruitment & Exposure Program. In her free time, Jaclyn enjoys cooking, singing, running, hiking, reading, and doing jigsaw puzzles.
PhD Candidate
Isabelle Oliver
PhD Student
Hannah Matthews
Hannah is a graduate student in the Harvard Biological Sciences in Public Health program, co-mentored by Jose and Kizzmekia Corbett. She is originally from North Carolina, and she completed her undergraduate studies at UNC Chapel Hill, majoring in Environmental Health Sciences. During her time at UNC, Hannah worked in Rebecca Fry’s lab, exploring the link between hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and PFAS, and in James Samet’s lab, investigating how environmental exposures affect redox balance in the human airway.
As a PhD student, Hannah is broadly interested in the regulators of entry and transmission of common respiratory viruses and how these viruses disrupt airway homeostasis. Outside of the lab, she enjoys attending concerts, running, and watching college basketball.
CDN Associate Comp. Biologist
Kyle Kimler
Kyle is an associate computational biologist with the Cell Discovery Network, where he analyzes inflamed pediatric gastrointestinal single-cell RNA sequencing data in a joint project with the Shalek and Kean Labs. Before moving to Boston, he did a MS centered at SciLifeLab in Sweden, where he sequentially worked in the Elsässer lab with unnatural amino acids, the Sonnhammer lab with networks of coexpression in spatial transcriptomics, and the Hudson lab making model chemolithoautrophic bacteria. Before that, he worked for three years in R&D Cell Bio Custom Services at Thermo Fisher. Before Thermo, he researched mosquito vision in the O’Tousa lab while doing a BS at Notre Dame.
Kyle is looking for a deeper understanding of general cell biology, which is why he chose to move into computational biology. He is excited to work with human data, and with so many humans on a joint project. While outdoors, he loves to go aimlessly exploring, foreign and domestic, by running and biking long distances and learning languages. While indoors, he loves reading and making music.
Research Technologist
Faith Taliaferro
Faith is a research technologist in the lab. Having decided that she was tired of constantly perfect weather and not having to own winter clothing back home in southern California (the better part of California), Faith attended the University of Pennsylvania where she earned her B.S.E. in mechanical engineering and applied mechanics. Before joining the lab, she worked in the lab of Lawrence (Skip) Brass at Penn, creating computational models in order to study how molecular transport within a hemostatic mass is affected by changes in mass microarchitecture.
She is excited to dive into the world of inflammation and looks forward to studying more human-facing concepts as opposed to those found primarily in physics textbooks. Outside of lab, Faith enjoys taking public transit to new places, listening to podcasts, walking long distances for fun, and reading too much about skincare.
Research Technologist
Amanda Frischmann
Amanda Frischmann is a Research Technologist in the lab. She has a BS in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, did her undergraduate thesis in computational chemistry, and is currently an MS student studying Intelligent Robotic Systems.
Amanda brings expertise in tissue engineering and 3D modeling from her previous cerebral iPSC research with Jeff Golden at Brigham & Women’s and from her experience in R&D at Emulate where she worked on a wide variety of organ-chips including a colorectal cancer model, CAR-T/immune cell recruitment assays, liver validation and more.
In the lab, she looks forward to studying how we can leverage the combination of complex 3D in vitro models with scRNA-seq and other analysis methods to elucidate spatiotemporal immunological memory interactions in nasal and respiratory tissue, particularly in regards to stem cells and rare cell types.
Outside of the lab Amanda teaches dance, is an avid runner, loves to paint and owns 4 different 3D printers which she uses to explore the intersections of AI based design, plant cells, and wearable technology.
Research Assistant
Jackson Larlee
Jackson hails from the great state of Maine and is a 2024 graduate of Tufts University with a B.S. in biology (super cool) and archaeology (also super cool). While at Tufts, he researched how population wide genomic data could be used to uncover recent demographic changes through writing simulations, as well as aiding in work on thermal tolerance in invasive marine snails. Excited to jump headfirst into inflammation, he enjoys viewing the cellular landscape as an interdependent system and is curious about how developmental pathways are informed through these complex interactions. He hopes to hone his passions and experiences en route to attaining a PhD.
When not hobbling around the lab, Jackson enjoys messing up new recipes, running until his heart explodes, returning his library books “on time”, playing strategy games a totally reasonable amount, pretending to understand wine culture, and flubbing his lines while performing on stage!
CDN Computational Biologist
Rose Hedderman
Rose is a computational biologist in the Cell Discovery Network. She is working to understand the relationship between existing cell cell communication networks affecting immune-mediated inflammatory diseases through single cell RNA-seq methods. Her work also involves equipping physician researchers to improve their computational fluency and data analysis skills for their experiments.
Rose has Bachelors degrees in Computational Biology and Neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin. At UT, she worked with Alexander Huth to investigate summarization models for decoding fMRI recordings from semantic tasks. She also assisted a first year PhD student in exploring spiking neural network simulators for neuromorphic hardware in Andreas Gerstlauer’s SLAM lab.
Prior to joining the lab, Rose worked on a hardware R&D team as an AI Software Architect at HP. She researched lightweight computer vision models for edge applications through preexisting quantization techniques.
Outside of the lab, Rose enjoys going on runs, traveling to see friends & family, attending local concerts, and hiking in national & state parks.
CDN Program Coordinator
Matt Morabito
Matt is the program coordinator for a number of Cell Discovery Network projects. His unorthodox yet impactful skill-set comes from years of experience coaching triathletes, runners and cyclists through personalized training program design, testing and data analysis. In addition to working at this comprehensive level with individual athletes, he is also the head coach of the Bentley University Triathlon Team, where he manages athletes individually but with the goal of group-synchronized results. When not coaching, he races long-course triathlon professionally.
Research Assistant
Sydney Mullin
Sydney is a proud New Jersey native who graduated from Princeton University in 2024, where she studied Molecular Biology (AB) and Bioengineering (cert.). She completed her thesis work in the lab of Dr. Alexander Ploss, generating a series of reporter viruses for application to identifying the cellular reservoirs of Usutu virus (USUV) and analyzing the spatio-temporal dynamics of infection.
Sydney is interested in understanding the dynamism of our immune systems and their interplay with the broader cellular environment in inflammatory disease. She aspires to pursue graduate studies in Immunology and to emphasize scientific outreach and communication in her studies and career.
Outside of the lab, Sydney enjoys dancing, musical theatre, playing the flute, traveling, and developing nuanced opinions on sparkling water.
Computational Research Associate, Shalek and Kean Labs
Current PhD student at UChicago
Research Associate, Shalek Lab
Student at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine
Visiting MS Student, Ordovas-Montanes and Shalek Labs
Current medical student at Karolinska Institutet
Postdoctoral Fellow
Postdoctoral fellow in the Megakaryocytes to Platelets Research Group at Boston Children's Hospital
Visiting PhD Student
PhD student in the Lab of Adaptive Immunity at the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences
Visiting Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar
Assistant Professor at the School of Medicine in Trinity College Dublin
High School Researcher
Student at the University of Toronto
Undergraduate researcher
Cell Therapy Research Assistant at Takeda
Visiting MS Student, Utrecht University
PhD Candidate at UMC Utretch
Visiting Researcher
Academic Clinical Fellow in Infectious Diseases at the University of Sheffield
Pediatrics Resident and Postdoctoral Fellow
Allergy and Immunology Fellow at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
PhD Candidate
PhD Candidate in the Birnbaum Lab at MIT
