Lab Members

Alexander Sasha Krupnick, MD  

Dr. Krupnick is a Professor of Surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine with clinical and research in thoracic organ transplantation and malignancies.

Anirban Banerjee, PhD

Dr. Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Surgery and focuses his research efforts on lung cancer-specific immune responses.  His work is leading to a better understanding now natural killer cells interact with CD8+ T cells to control the growth of lung cancer.

Alex (Zhongcheng) Mei, MD

Dr. Mei is an MD with deep expertise in mouse microsurgery and immunology. Dr. Mei explores the multifaceted interplay of immune responses, cellular interactions, and biological factors that are critical to the long-term success of lung transplantation. His current work focuses on establishing tolerance to chronic lung rejection and the immune response following lung surgery.

Mojtaba Taheri,MD

Dr Taheri is a postdoctoral fellow with a background in General Surgery and skills in microsurgery working on Tolerance and Rejection mechanisms in Lung Transplantation and also Lung Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury.

Dongge Li, MD

Dr. Li is a research lead specialist, she specializes in immune-response studies, both in vivo and in vitro and is an expert in protein biology and protein chemistry. Dr. Li is involved in both transplant and cancer, oriented research projects and extends her immense lab experience to successfully carry out critical experiments.

May Khalil

May Khalil graduated with her B.S in molecular and cell biology in 2021. She currently works on multiple projects in the lab concerning lung transplant and lung cancer. She is interested in becoming a physician scientist MD/PhD and is primarily interested in immunology.

Christina Kratzmeier

Christina Kratzmeier is a PhD candidate in the Molecular Microbiology & Immunology program with a primary research interest in tumor immunology. She graduated with a B.S. in Biological Science – Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics in 2021 from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her current research project is aimed at investigating the role of CD8+ T cells in lung cancer immunosurveillance and exploring mechanisms contributing to the relationship between lung tumor cells and CD8+ T cells.

Nicole Flegel

Nicole is a summer rotational MD-PhD student in the lab who is interested clinically in pediatric and surgical oncology. She hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in tumor immunology and T-cell biology. 

Faculty:

Yizhan Guo MD

Yizhan Guo was an Assistant Professor of Surgery in our Lab and a world-leading expert in eosinophil immunoregulation of lung allograft-specific immune responses.  His research focused on tolerance induction and downregulation of ischemia-reperfusion injury-mediated lung damage. He is doing Cardiothoracic Surgery Residency now.

Postdocs:

Saeed Arefanian, MD

Amir Manafi, MD

Oscar Onyema

Lei Shi

Kang Li

Bayan Mahgoub

Medical Students:

Kelly Chen

Isabelle Lim

Undergrads:

Lea Paragas

Jacqueline Slobin

Collin Bast