Participants

Bio

Joana Almaça is a HIRN New Investigator and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Her current research focuses on the vasculature of the islet. In her work, Dr. Almaça is testing the hypothesis that microvascular dysfunction in the islet leads to a disturbance of hormone secretion, to glucose intolerance, and eventually to diabetes.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/profile-almaca

Projects

Changes in Human Islet Microvasculature during Type 1 Diabetes

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Joana+Almaca

Bio

Juan Alvarez is a HIRN Emerging Leader Award Recipient and an Assistant Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. His research focuses on human stem cell-derived pancreatic islet organoids and mice as model systems to study islet development, physiology, and pathology, and to develop replacement therapies for insulin-dependent diabetes. We focus on the interplay between circadian rhythms, metabolism, and islet cell maturation.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator-profile-juan-r-alvarez

Projects

Measuring Islet-wide Function with Soft Integrated Nanoelectronics

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=juan+alvarez

Bio

Charles Ansong was a Senior Research Scientist within the Integrative Omics group, Biological Sciences Division at PNNL. His research focused on the centers on the utilization of advanced mass spectrometry-based omics technologies and systems biology approaches to better understand complex biological systems relevant to human health and the environment. Currently, he is a Program Director at The National Institutes of Health at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS).

Projects

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Charles+Ansong

Bio

Hugh Bender is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Chris Hughes Lab at the University of California, Irvine. He is also Lead Scientist at Aracari Biosciences. Dr. Bender received his PhD in 2015 from Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses on developing a novel micro-vascularized organ system for modeling Type I diabetes in the lab. Dr. Bender is an active member of CHIB and a member of the HIRN Technical User Group.

Lab:

https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/hugheslab/

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/staff_hbender

Projects

Bio

Kristin Burnum-Johnson is a Senior Scientist and Team Lead of the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory's Metabolomics group at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Her research is dedicated to characterizing the molecular landscape of heterogeneous samples using novel mass spectrometry approaches to address specific biological, medical, and environmental research questions. These approaches involve multi-dimensional liquid chromatography and ion mobility separations in conjunction with mass spectrometry to measure proteins, lipids, and metabolites.

Projects

Single Cell Resolution of Omics Analysis of T1D Islets

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=+Kristin+Burnum-Johnson

Bio

Martha Campbell-Thompson is a Professor, Director of the Molecular Pathology Core at the University of Florida and Director of the JDRF nPOD Organ Procurement and Pathology Core. Her research interests are in beta cell biology, beta cell regeneration for type 1 diabetes, islet inflammation and neuromodulation of beta cell function.

Projects

Defining Islet Heterogeneity Using Single Islet Transcriptomics

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Martha+Campbell+Thompson

HIRN Webinar:

Bio

Richard Caprioli is the Director of the Mass Spectrometry Research Center at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and a Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University. The research interests of this laboratory are aimed at the investigation of biological processes involving the synthesis, modification, storage and degradation of certain peptides and proteins using modern mass spectrometric methods of analysis to follow molecular events. In recent years there has been a great amount of interest in investigating the biochemical events involved in the metabolism of peptides, primarily in the brain and gut of mammals, encompassing the enzymatic breakdown of these peptides, their production from peptide and protein precursors, and the disruption of these processes by certain xenobiotics.

Projects

High-Resolution Analysis of Juvenile Human Pancreas Maturation

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Richard+Caprioli

Bio

Shuibing Chen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery and Department of Biochemistry at Weill Cornell Medical College. Her research interest is to manipulate stem cell fate using chemical and biological approaches and to generate functional tissues and organs that can be used for translational research.

Projects

Determining the Intrinsic and Environmental Signal Contributing to Early T1D Progression

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Shuibing+Chen

Bio

Decio L. Eizirik is a Professor at the ULB Center for Diabetes Research Medical Faculty, Universite Libre de Bruxells (ULB) in Brussels, Belgium. His research focuses on the molecular mechanisms regulating insulitis and beta cell apoptosis in type 1 diabetes and on the search for novel approaches to prevent the progressive loss of beta cell mass in diabetes.

Projects

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Decio+Eizirik%2C

Bio

Leonardo Ferreira is a HIRN Emerging Leader Award Recipient and an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina. His research focuses on phenomenon of immune tolerance, his long term goal is to control how the immune system defines self and non-self. Such knowledge will allow the design and development of powerful new engineered immune cell therapies to fight autoimmune disease, cancer, and aging.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator-profile-leonardo-m-r-ferreira

Projects

Dissecting Chimeric Antigen Receptor Function in Human Regulatory T Cells

Bio

Jing Hughes is a Gateway Award Recipient and an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Lipid Research at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis. Her research focuses on the islet cell-cell interactions and the regulation of islet hormone secretion.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator-profile-jing-hughes

Projects

Primary Cilia in Human T1D Pancreas

Bio

Alok Joglekar is a Gateway Award Recipient and an Assistant Research Professor of Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh. His research aims to examine the shifting antigenic landscape of anti-tumor T cell responses, determine the fundamental rules of TCR-pMHC interactions, and to investigate novel immunotherapies to autoimmune diseases.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator-profile-alok-joglekar

Projects

Identification of the Cognate Epitopes of Autoreactive T Cells in T1D

Bio

Hirotake Komatsu is a Gateway Award Recipient and an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Translational Research & Cellular Therapeutics at City of Hope. His expertise is derived from a broad training in medicine and basic research in the fields of pancreas surgery and pancreatic islet transplantation.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator-profile-hirotake-komatsu?hilite=%27hirotake%27

Projects

Vascular Network-mimetic Oxygen-Transporting Mesh for Islet Graft

Bio

Vira Kravets is a HIRN Emerging Leader Award Recipient and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. She is currently leading interdisciplinary projects in search for the underlying causes for Diabetes. Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation supported Fellow, skilled in Islet Biology, Surface Plasmon Resonance, Microscopy, Optics and Public Speaking

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator-profile-vira-kavets

Projects

Beta-cells 1st Responders and Functional Paracrine Networks in Healthy and Diabetic Human Islets

Bio

Julia Laskin is a Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University. Her research at the interface of physical and analytical chemistry is focused on the advanced development of preparative and analytical mass spectrometry for applications in materials synthesis, imaging and chemical analysis of biological systems at a subcellular level, and environmental sciences.

Projects

Single Cell Resolution of Omics Analysis of T1D Islets

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Julia+Laskin

Bio

Raghavendra Mirmira is the Director of the Department of Medicine Translational Research Center and Professor of Medicine in the Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the University of Chicago. His research focuses his efforts on the pathogenesis of diabetes mellitus and the biology of the islet. His laboratory is interested in three key areas: the role of mRNA translation in the cellular response of islet β cells to inflammation; the role of lipoxygenases in dysfunction of β cells in Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes; and the identification of biomarkers of β-cell stress and death in diabetes.

Projects

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Mirmira

HIRN Webinar:

Bio

Joyce Niland is the co-Principal Investigator of the Human Islet Research Enhancement Center (HIREC). She is also the Chair and Professor in the Department of Diabetes & Cancer Discovery Science within the Arthur Riggs Diabetes & Metabolism Research Institute at City of Hope. is an interdisciplinary center for research methodology involving high-complexity clinical research/phenotypic data.

Lab:

https://tinyurl.com/nilandlab

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator_profile_jniland

Projects

Human Islet Research Enhancement Center (HIREC)

Bio

Anath Shalev is the chair of the Consortium of Beta Cell Death and Survival (CBDS) and a member of the Trans-Network Committee (TNC). She is the Director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Comprehensive Diabetes Center, Professor of Medicine and Senior Scientist. Her research focuses on Molecular biology of diabetes, beta cell biology, apoptosis, oxidative stress, transcriptional regulation of gene expression, and diabetes complications.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator_profile_shalev

Projects

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Anath+Shalev

Bio

Robert Sharp is a HIRN Emerging Leader Award Recipient and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Brusko Lab at the University of Florida. His research interests are in the area of study involves examining immunoregulation in type 1 diabetes, focusing on lymphocyte regulation genes including PTPN22 (protein tyrosine phosphatase non-receptor type 22), SIRPG (signal regulatory protein gamma), and cluster of differentiation 47 (CD47).

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator-profile-robert-c-sharp

Projects

The SIRP:CD47 Signaling Pathway in Pancreatic Beta-Cell Survival”

Bio

Doris Stoffers is a HPAC Investigator and a member of the Trans-Network Committee (TNC). She is a the Director of the Pancreatic Islet Cell Biology Core, Director of the Pilot Feasibility Program and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the embryonic development and adult regeneration of the endocrine pancreas, and the relationship of defects in these pathways to the pathophysiology of diabetes mellitus, a disease caused by a deficiency in the production or action of insulin.

Projects

Bio

Bridget Wagner is the chair of the Consortium of Targeting and Regeneration (CTAR) and the Trans-Network Committee (TNC). Additionlly, she is a CTAR Investigator. She is also the Director of Pancreatic Cell Biology and Metabolic Disease in the Chemical Biology and Therapeutic Sciences Program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she is also an institute scientist. Her research focuses on the chemical biology of diabetes, with the aim of identifying small molecules capable of increasing pancreatic beta cell number and function and the ultimate goal of discovering new therapeutic approaches for diabetes.

Lab:

https://www.broadinstitute.org/bios/bridget-wagner

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator_profile_bwagner

Projects

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/Contributor/Index/bridget_wagner@hirnetwork.org