Robert Manguso PhD (Principal Investigator) is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School and an Associate Member at the Broad Institute. He completed his undergraduate degree at Wheaton College in Norton, MA, and his PhD at Harvard Medical school/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Nick Haining's lab. His work focuses on using functional genomics to improve our understanding of cancer immunology and the treatment of cancer with immunotherapies. When not using “immunology” to neatly explain conflicting data, he may be found hiking, backcountry skiing, proselytizing hikers and skiers to become backcountry skiers, hanging out with his dogs, and consuming dangerous quantities of ramen.
Kathleen Yates (co-Director) is the co-leader for TIDE and master of RNA-seq; without her, the lab would be funding-free, an organizational nightmare, and constantly embroiled in pointless bickering. Fueled primarily by coffee and baked goods, she spends her evenings and weekends shuffling her adorable children toward their hopes and dreams, contracting various illnesses and injuries in exotic locations, and generally being a model citizen.
Hsiao-Wei Tsao (Research Scientist) was born and raised in Taiwan, completed his postdoctoral work in the Haining lab at Dana-Farber, and now leads the TIDE hit advancement team. He has been dedicated to studying T cell biology since 2004 and considers the whale shark his spirit animal. Known for his “golden hands,” Hsiao-Wei is a stone-cold professional scientist.
Cong Fu (Postdoctoral Fellow) is pursuing her post-doc at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in the Uppaluri Lab as well as working in collaboration with the Manguso Lab. Her previous research includes studying hematopoiesis and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) utilizing zebrafish animal model. She is now focusing on cancer immunology and immunotherapy. The proudest thing in her whole life is she ever completed a Full Marathon (long time ago....). Outside the lab she enjoys reading, looking at bridges and Chinese style potato chips.
Jooho Chung (Postdoctoral Fellow) is an adult medical oncology fellow at Dana Farber Cancer Institute/Massachusetts General Brigham. He is training to be a physician-scientist in the field of bone marrow transplantation/cellular therapy. He completed his PhD at the University of Michigan with Ivan Maillard, studying the role of Notch signaling in alloimmunity. He enjoys watching football and playing tennis, but now has the time to do neither.
Nelson Knudsen (Research Scientist) completed his PhD at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Chih-Hao Lee’s Lab studying immunometabolism in obesity and exercise physiology. He enjoys running on roads and trails, cycling, and skiing with his dog.
Payal Tiwari (Postdoctoral Fellow) is pursuing her post-doc at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in the Hahn Lab as well as working in collaboration with the Manguso Lab. Payal completed her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago and then ventured over to Boston to continue her work in cancer research. Payal enjoys cooking excellent Indian dishes, the extremely cold Boston weather, and getting lost on hikes without cell service.
Cun Lan Chuong (in vivo Specialist) assists with the many mouse experiments that TIDE conducts at the Broad. Outside of work, Lan enjoys watching NFL football. One day, she’d love to purchase an RV mobile home for travel with family and friends.
Collins Cheruiyot (Graduate Student) was a research associate the TIDE team after graduating from Brown University and worked on the mechanisms driving tumor immunotherapy sensitivity to ADAR deletion. Collins is now enrolled in the Immunology PhD program at Harvard Medical School, and studies lipid metabolism and autophagy in anti-tumor immunity.
Sarah Kim (Computational Biology Associate) majored in Computational Biology and was excited to find a position that had both of those words in the title! She enjoys taking the T in the wrong direction and endorsing Julia as the optimal programming language.
Jonathan Lopez-Benitez (Project Coordinator) graduated from Boston University with a degree in neuroscience and medical anthropology. Leaving the days of Alzheimer’s research behind, Jonathan is a project coordinator for our group. Outside of the office you can find him reading, cooking day-long dishes, or trying to figure out how to garden in a Boston apartment.
Celeste Nobrega (Computational Associate) recently graduated from Wheaton College (MA) with a degree in Bioinformatics. During their time at Wheaton, they completed an Honors Thesis project studying the long term impacts of chronic early life stress on the ability of the zebrafish to regenerate their caudal fin by integrating bulk genomic data with single cell data in a novel analysis. Outside of computational research, you can find Celeste volunteering on weekends or talking about her love of the outdoors and animals — specifically cats, dogs, and horses.
Hans Pope (Research Scientist) is returning to TIDE and the Griffin Lab after 3 years of working at Arsenal Biosciences in South San Francisco developing CAR-T cell therapies. Previously an original member of TIDE, he is both amazed and grateful to have been welcomed back. When away from the bench, he almost certainly skiing, listening to audio books in traffic, or trying to tire out his German shepherd.
Jordan Chinai (Postdoctoral Fellow) is an adult medical oncology fellow in the Dana-Farber/Mass General Brigham program. He completed his MD/PhD at Einstein in New York and did research related to novel checkpoint inhibitors in tumor immunotherapy. His current clinical and research interests surround discovery of targets to enable and enhance responses to immunotherapy in GI malignancies. Outside of work, he enjoys exploring New England and traveling the world trying to meet all of the weird and amazing animals that are out there.
Aiping Jiang (Postdoctoral Fellow) is utilizing in vivo CRISPR screen platform at TIDE to discover new cancer immunotherapy targets and resistance mechanisms. Before joining TIDE, she worked as a postdoc at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston in Dr. Timothy Springer’s lab and received a Ph.D from Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. In the spare time, she loves playing badminton, jogging along Charles River/ponds, exploring museums.
Erin Kistler (Research Associate) is originally from southern California and recently graduated from Denison University with a degree in Biology. At Denison, Erin studied phage-antibiotic synergy as a treatment method for Burkholderia cenocepacia infections. Outside of lab, Erin enjoys reading, running, and watching soccer.
Mitra Pezeshki (Research Associate) is a California native and a recent grad of Scripps College in Claremont. She spent a year abroad at the University of Copenhagen in a molecular pharmacology lab studying orphan GPCRs, and also worked for a startup aiming to deploy fungi for carbon sequestration. She loves skiing, yoga, cooking and cats.
Sarah Noel (Research Associate) recently graduated from Penn State University with a degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. While at Penn State she studied a novel therapeutic for leukemia as well as the epithelial to mesenchymal transition in breast cancer. When she's not in the lab she enjoys trying new coffee shops and walking other people's dogs.
Alex Rojas (Research Associate) is originally from Long Island, New York and a recent graduate from Emory University. At Emory he worked on developing an mRNA delivery system using extracellular vesicles. Outside of the lab Alex enjoys playing volleyball, getting beat up in muay thai, gaming and desperately trying to learn how to cook gourmet dishes.
Yaiza Senent (Postdoctoral Associate) completed her Ph.D. at the University of Navarra and moved to Boston (despite countless warnings about the cold weather in Boston) to pursue her post-doc in the TIDE team. Beyond science, Yaiza is a semiprofessional contemporary dancer and teacher, as well as a skilled painter. When she's not in the lab, dancing or painting, you may find her reading, trying new restaurants, and discovering new places.
Aidan Cruickshank (Computational Associate) completed his BSc in Biochemistry and Computer Science at McGill University and is currently finishing up his MSc in Human Genetics from McGill as well. Previously, his research focused on germline whole genome sequencing in cancer patient populations, with a focus on genomic variation relevant to cancer predisposition. Outside of the lab, Aidan enjoys reading sci-fi and fantasy novels, playing video games, and hitting the gym. He is super excited to be joining the TIDE and Manguso lab teams!
Rohan Shinkre (Research Associate) is originally from San Diego, California and recently graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Bioengineering. At Berkeley, he studied the human immune response to dengue virus and investigated the role of neutralizing IgM antibodies in the blood. Outside of lab, Rohan enjoys hiking, live music, and trying new foods.
Maria Zschummel (Postdoctoral Fellow) obtained her bachelor of science in biology at the Humboldt university in Berlin, minoring in chemistry. She continued with her master’s in molecular life sciences there and first came into contact and grew a passion for the concept of cellular immunotherapy during an internship on TCR-modified T cells. She pursued her PhD at the MDC berlin with Uta Höpken, where she focused on improving CAR T cell therapy for lymphoma by altering their tumor-homing potential. Co-mentored by Dr. Debattama Sen, Maria focuses on unbiased approaches to enhance T cell cytotoxicity in vitro and in vivo. When she’s not fussing over how awesome T cells (and great white sharks) are, Maria enjoys and complains about getting sunburned on hikes, going to concerts and desperately trying to find a decent Pilsner in Boston.
Nuno Alfaiate (Research Associate) is working in the Hahn lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and in collaboration with the Manguso lab. He completed his MSc in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. He did two MSc theses, one in the Coffer lab at UMC Utrecht, where he worked on visualizing mRNA translation transferred in extracellular vesicles using a SunTag-based approach, and in the Schumacher lab at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, where he investigated immunological synapse stability in T cells. Before joining the Manguso lab, he was identifying novel shared neoantigen TCRs for cell therapy at AstraZeneca in Amsterdam. Outside the lab, he's either being overpowered by the wind while kitesurfing, scraping his hands on climbing walls, sweating it out in some outdoor activity (including realizing halfway a hike that the distance was one way and not the total), or attempting to master metal guitar riffs (with mixed success).