LSRII flow cell lasers: photo by David Parks
2020
Left to right: Landi White (winner of Chef Laureate 2020; category: Dessert), Devon Eddins, Eliver Ghosn, Junkai Yang, Fathma Abdulkhader, Astrid Kosters, and Wodan (one of the two lab mascots). Ben Babcock, the winner of Chef Laureate 2020 in the category “Main Dish”, and Toast (the other lab mascot) are not in the photo as they had to leave before we counted the ballots.
December | chef laureate 2020
Our holiday party this year involved some delicious competition! We organized the first-ever Annual Cook-off event to highlight all the amazing cooks in the Ghosn Lab.
Congratulations to Landi and Ben for winning the first trophies as the Chef Laureate 2020 in the categories Dessert and Main Dish, respectively. Landi made a delicious Basque Burnt Cheesecake with 2 options for toppings, lemon curd, and giant blueberry sauce. Ben made an amazing 100 hours/7-steps (maybe longer?) smoked Berkshire pork ribs. Unfortunately, Ben is not in the photo - he had to leave early.
It was a beautiful and fun day in Piedmont Park!
Happy Holidays!
October | B-cell responses to SARS-cov-2
Congratulations to Matt Woodruff, Rich Ramonell, and our collaborators Drs. Eun-Hyung Lee’ and Iñaki Sanz’s lab for this great study showing that critically ill patients display hallmarks of extrafollicular B cell activation and shared B-cell repertoire features described in autoimmune diseases such as Lupus (SLE). The study was published this month in Nature Immunology.
august | NIH grant awarded
The Ghosn Lab received an NIH/NIAID R01 supplement to study the innate immune responses in COVID-19 patients that are in critical conditions in the ICU.
august | on big data…
Emory has highlighted our studies using AWS for data analysis and data management of multi-OMICS single-cell assays.
august | new lab member
Fathma Abdulkhader is joining our team as a Research Specialist. Fathma received her BS in Biology from the University of Georgia, where she was an undergraduate research assistant and studied transcriptional regulation of virulence-associated genes in the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In the future, she hopes to pursue a career in medicine as a physician. During her free time she enjoys cooking all kinds of food and working out/staying active.
Welcome to the team Fathma!
august | T cells vs. antibodies against COVID-19?
Our collaborators on the CHIRP study make their case about the possible protective role of T cells in patients that show poor antibody responses. See their interview at various news outlets, including a Gladstone Institute’s press release and San Francisco Chronicle newspaper.
august | CoV2-specific T cells: long-term protection?
Congratulations Jason Neidleman, Xiaoyu Luo, Julie Frouard, Guorui Xie and all our CHIRP/UCSF collaborators for this great study on T-cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 published this month at Cell Reports Medicine!
june | first results from our covid-19 studies
We have submitted the first results of our COVID-19 studies in bioRxiv! This study (CHIRP cohort) was led by Nadia Roan’s team (UCSF) and collaborators and describes unique features of SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells.
may | covid-19 grant awarded
We were awarded our first COVID-19 grant in collaboration with our colleagues at UCSF (CHIRP study). Our project Characterization of B cell and antibody responses associated with efficient recovery from COVID-19 is led by Nadia Roan (UCSF), Sulggi Lee (UCSF), Joshua Vasquez (UCSF) and Eliver Ghosn (Emory).
Read more in this news article about our studies!
may | graduated!
Sachin Kumar graduated from the Bioinformatics Master Program at Georgia Tech! Sachin performed his research program in computational immunology in the Ghosn lab and remains as a lab member to finalize key research projects.
Congratulations Sachin on this important achievement!
april | new publication
Our collaborators at University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston discovered that the self-renewal capability of innate-like B cells (B-1a) is regulated by the gene Bmi1 by a similar mechanism employed by Hematopoietic Stem Cells. These studies, in collaboration with the Ghosn Lab, were published in The Journal of Immunology.
april | PROATECT Team
The Ghosn Lab is ramping up COVID-19 research operations and established the PROATECT team: Profiling of Antibody-secreting cells (ASC) and Tissue-resident macrophages (TRM): Emory COVID-19 Task Force. The PROATECT team members (currently Astrid Kosters, Devon Eddins, Ben Babcock, and Junkai Yang) will work closely with both UCSF and Emory to profile the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 in both blood and respiratory secretions of COVID-19 patients.
april | covid-19 research
We are excited to be joining efforts with our collaborators at UCSF to study the immune response to SARS-CoV-2. The study COVID-19 Host Immune Response Pathogenesis (CHIRP) was conceived and initiated by Dr. Sulggi Lee (UCSF) and includes researchers Nadia Roan (UCSF), Joshua Vasquez (UCSF), and Eliver Ghosn (Emory).
march | response to COvid-19
In response to the rapidly developing situation and with the main goal of minimizing potential exposure and transmission within our community, the Ghosn Lab will move to remote operations starting Monday March 23rd. Emory University is closely monitoring the situation and releasing daily updates here: COVID-19
Please, be safe and practice social distancing and basic hygiene practices to protect yourself and our community. Here’s a link with useful GUIDANCE
march | he got another award
Devon again! Congratulations for being selected as a recipient of the 2020 AAI-Thermo Fisher Trainee Achievement Award. Devon was one of the two graduate students to receive this Award. He will be recognized and presented with the award at the AAI Annual Meeting – IMMUNOLOGY 2020 – held May 8-12, in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Congratulations Devon! Well deserved.
february | talking about macrophages
Congratulations to our graduate student Devon Eddins for being selected to give an oral presentation at the upcoming AAI Immunology Conference to be held in Honolulu, Hawaii on May 8-12. Devon will be sharing some of his exciting results on the dual origin of certain tissue-resident macrophages. His talk will be presented in the Myeloid and Erythroid Differentiation Session.
Congratulations Devon! We are looking forward to celebrating with you in Hawaii!
february | reunion party at Stanford university
The Herzenberg Lab @ Stanford is celebrating 60 years of continue research led by Lee and Len Herzenberg. To celebrate this achievement, and Lee’s 85th anniversary in February, the Herzenberg Lab (aka LAH) hosted a reunion party and symposium at the new Traitel Conference Center. Representing Emory, Eliver and Rabin Tirouvanziam (both alumni of the LAH Lab) traveled back to Stanford to congratulate Lee and meet old friends. Eliver spent 12 years in Herzenberg Lab (2005-2017) before joining Emory. During the symposium, Eliver gave a talk to highlight some of the work we are doing here in the Ghosn lab and how the LAH Lab has influenced many of the studies and the culture of our lab. At the gala dinner, Mario Roederer (also an alumni) gave a heartfelt talk to celebrate the LAH Lab and described 7 lessons that he (we!) learned during our time with the Herzenberg family and that we continue to apply today in our own labs.
These lessons summarize the culture we also strive to foster here in the Ghosn Lab:
Think Critically
Be Committed
Diversity is Key
Follow the Data
Science Belongs to the Public
Scientists have a duty to inform
Lab is Family
february | rotating graduate student - cb
Ben Babcock is joining our team as a rotating graduate student from the Cancer Biology (CB) Graduate Program. Ben will leverage his expertise on single-cell RNAseq technologies, and collaborate with Junkai and Sachin, to test and validate various batch correction algorithms to allow us to compare human B cell development (and subsets) across different tissues and ages. He will also work with Lori and Diane to develop new cell culture conditions to study (and modulate) human B cells in vitro.
Welcome to the team, Ben!
february | rotating graduate student - IMP
Wayne Cheng is joining our team as a rotating graduate student from the IMP (Immunology and Molecular Pathogenesis) Program. Wayne is taking on the task of characterizing the B-cell development in a new transgenic mouse model developed by our collaborators at Mount Sinai (NYC). Wayne will learn to develop, apply, and analyze high-dimensional flow cytometry data to characterize the various murine B-cell subsets in the bone marrow, spleen, blood, and peritoneal cavity.
Welcome to the team, Wayne!
january | fellowship awarded
Congratulations to Sachin Kumar for being selected as the 2020 GRA fellow! Sachin is a master’s student at Georgia Tech’s Bioinformatics Program and he has been awarded the Computational Biology Faculty Research Award to do computational immunology research in the Ghosn lab for this semester.
Congratulations and welcome to the team Sachin!
january | Junkai is back as a Bioinformatician
We are excited to have Junkai Yang joining our team now as a full-time Bioinformatician (Research Specialist). Junkai graduated from Georgia Tech’s Bioinformatics Master Program last December while doing his research project in the Ghosn lab. Junkai will continue to work closely with our Biology researchers and lead some of the bioinformatics projects in the lab.
Welcome back Junkai!