\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Kowalski_2023_headshot_crop-273x300.jpg\") <\/a><\/p>\nCaitlin Kowalski (she\/her)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n | “Interkingdom interactions of the skin microbiome”<\/td>\n | Caitlin Kowalski is a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oregon in the lab of Matthew Barber. She received her PhD in Microbiology and Immunology in 2020 from the Guarini School of Graduate Studies at Dartmouth under the mentorship of Robert Cramer. Her dissertation investigated how oxygen availability impacts pathogenesis and antifungal susceptibility of the human fungal pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus.<\/em> Building upon her interests in how fungi influence human health, Caitlin\u2019s postdoctoral research focuses on how skin resident fungi interact with bacterial pathogens to impact host health and pathogen evolution. In 2023, Caitlin was awarded a L\u2019Or\u00e9al USA For Women in Science Fellowship and selected as a Leading Edge Fellow.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/MoralesPolanco_Fabian_Headshot-300x258.jpg\") <\/a><\/p>\nFabi\u00e1n Morales-Polanco (he\/him)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n | “Spatial and temporal subcellular interactomics reveal factors differentially recruited to nuclear and cytosolic spatial protein quality control”<\/td>\n | Fabi\u00e1n Morales-Polanco, PhD, is a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University’s Frydman Lab, specializing in proteostasis in eukaryotic cells. His focus lies in translation, clearance mechanisms, and their implications for health and disease. He holds a Ph.D. in Biotechnology and Enterprise from the University of Manchester, UK. Fabi\u00e1n’s research in RNA biology, protein quality control, and aging-related molecular mechanisms has yielded notable discoveries. He has investigated nuclear and cytoplasmic protein quality control interactions and novel pathways for clearing misfolded proteins. His work also encompasses studying the co-localization and translation of glycolytic mRNAs within RNA granules, unveiling regulatory mechanisms for protein complex assembly. Dedicated to scientific communication and mentorship, Fabi\u00e1n strives to inspire students’ enthusiasm for scientific inquiry while advancing proteostasis research for the betterment of human health.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Pruss_Headshot_030424-226x300.jpg\") <\/a><\/p>\nKali Pruss (she\/her)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n | “Multi-system responses to intergenerational transmission of small intestinal bacteria from undernourished Bangladeshi children and women with enteropathy”<\/td>\n | Kali Pruss, PhD, has spent her research career thus far exploring the hypothesis that the nature of inflammation dictates the nature of interactions between the gut microbiota and host. As an undergraduate in Ron Taylor\u2019s lab, she focused on understanding Vibrio cholerae <\/em>motility towards chemo-attractants present in both the gut and environmental reservoirs. During her PhD in Justin Sonnenburg\u2019s lab, she teased apart mechanisms by which gut bacteria alter their metabolic behavior depending on the extent of inflammation in the gut, with a focus on the enteric pathogen, Clostridioides difficile. <\/em>She discovered a metabolic pathway that the organism uses to exploit a host-derived metabolite produced during inflammation as well as one it turns to for persistence in the absence of inflammation. A related gut commensal, Clostridium sporogenes<\/em>, rather than utilizing host compounds, produces aromatic amino acid metabolites that the host can use for energy generation through fatty acid \u00df-oxidation.<\/p>\n Currently, during her post-doc in Jeffrey Gordon\u2019s lab, she is working to understand how the small intestinal microbiota mediates the chronic inflammatory state that accompanies environmental enteric dysfunction (EED) and the systemic effects of this state. As the etiological agents of EED are undefined, she\u2019s employing a top-down approach: starting with duodenal aspirates from children or adult Bangladeshi women with EED, she has developed gnotobiotic mouse models to understand the effect of members of the small intestinal microbiota on intestinal physiology, the immune system, brain biology, and fetal development. She plans to start an independent career investigating interactions between the environment, gut microbiota, and fetal development.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/2021-Photo_Romero-236x300.jpeg\") <\/a><\/p>\nRodrigo Romero (he\/him)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n | \u201cThe role of lineage plasticity and its impact on the tumor microenvironment during therapy resistance.\u201d<\/td>\n | Rodrigo was born in Caracas Venezuela. He obtained his BSc in Biology from Suffolk University, and a PhD in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As a PhD student with Tyler Jacks, he was among the first to use CRISPR to interrogate genotype-specific dependencies in lung cancers harboring KEAP1<\/em> mutations. As a Charles. H. Revson Fellow with Charles Sawyers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, he developed novel models of prostate cancer used to unravel the mechanisms underlying resistance to androgen-deprivation therapy through lineage plasticity.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Zuri-Sullivan-300x225.jpg\") <\/a><\/p>\nZuri Sullivan (she\/her)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n | “How infection makes us sick: neuroimmune control of sickness behavior”<\/td>\n | Zuri is an HHMI Hanna H. Gray Fellow in the lab of Dr. Catherine Dulac in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University. An immunologist and molecular neuroscientist, she focuses on the neuroimmune interactions that govern sickness behavior during infection. Zuri earned an AB in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Harvard University, where she developed an interest in host pathogen interactions while working in Dr. Eric Rubin\u2019s lab at the Harvard School of Public Health. After college, she spent two years working in Durban, South Africa as a Fulbright Scholar, studying human immunity to tuberculosis and HIV. She earned a PhD in Immunobiology from Yale University, where she worked in the lab of Dr. Ruslan Medzhitov as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. There, she discovered an unexpected role for the immune system in the control of nutrient uptake in the intestine. After graduate school, Zuri changed fields to pursue postdoctoral training in molecular neuroscience, where she studies the impact of inflammatory signals on neural circuits that control social interaction. Zuri\u2019s long-term research interests aim to bridge immunology and neuroscience to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying sickness behavior.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n| \n \n<\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nAgenda<\/h2>\nApril 28th<\/h3>\n6:00 pm:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Dinner with Catalyst Fellows and faculty hosts<\/p>\n | | | |
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