Genevieve, (Giny) Fouda Amouou, PhD
Assistant Professor, Pediatrics
Giny is interested in developing immune based interventions to prevent/cure pediatric infectious diseases. Her current research focuses on understanding differences in HIV vaccine-elicited antibody responses between adults and infants and how different adjuvants modulate vaccine responses. She is also interested in understanding immune responses to HIV infection in children and whether enhancement of these responses through active and/or passive immunization could contribute to virus control.
Carolyn Weinbaum
Program Manager
Carolyn is responsible for managing Dr. Permar's grant portfolio, research animal protocols, liaising with collaborators, and coordinating all research program projects.
Joshua Eudailey
Laboratory Research Analyst II, Laboratory Manager
Josh is currently performing assays to detect neutralizing antibody responses in vaccinated subjects as well as in the setting of natural HIV-1 infection to determine what types of responses may be critical to elicit with a vaccine. He also assists with assays and/or study coordination of multiple ongoing projects related to HIV, ZIKV, and Rotavirus vaccine development.
Assay specialties: neutralization assay in TZM-bl cells, flow cytometry, microscopy
Amit Kumar, PhD
Research Scientist
Amit is working to understand the role of maternal antibodies in protection against mother to child transmission (MTCT) of HIV-1.
Assay specialties: Mammalian cell culture, Molecular biology and protein chemistry techniques, including deep sequencing.
Sarah Valencia, PhD
Research Scientist
Sarah completed her PhD focusing on characterizing the entry of Epstein Barr virus into Epithelial and B cells. She comes to the Permar Lab from her postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Jeff Cohen (NIH) working on developing vaccines for Cytomegalovirus using the rhesus model.
Assay specialties: CMV and Herpes immunology, rhesus models
Ria Goswami, PhD
Postdoctoral Associate
Ria studies strategies to reduce establishment of oral HIV-1 reservoir in infants to inform HIV Vaccine and Cure strategies.
Assay Specialties: Tissue processing and coculture, HIV-1 infection of human tonsils in vitro, flow cytometry, digital droplet PCR, qPCR.
Ashely Nelson, PhD
Postdoctoral Associate
Viral Oncology Training Grant T32-CA009111
Clinical and Translational Science Award TL1 UL1TR002553
Ashley is working to develop maternal and infant HIV vaccine regimens that aim to prevent infant HIV-1 infection on the HIVRAD Program Project Grant.
Assay Specialties: Ashley brings much experience from her research on viral RNA persistence at John Hopkins where she investigated the innate immune responses, and characterized the dynamics of the adaptive immune responses to measles virus infection and vaccination.
Stella Berendam, PhD
Postdoctoral Associate, Fouda Lab
Stella is working on a Program Project Grant with Emory University collaborators to help define the origin, kinetics, and predictors of viral rebound following long term ART treatment.
Assay Specialties: Primary cell isolation and culture, immunohistochemistry, in-situ hybridization, flow cytometry, RNA-sequencing, ELISA, neutralization
Stephanie Langel, PhD
Postdoctoral Associate
Interdisciplinary Research Training Program in AIDS T32- AI007392
Stephanie is currently working on an IDLV-Rotavirus project in collaboration with Dr. Maria Blasi.
Assay Specialties: Stephanie brings a wide range of experience from her studies at Ohio State University on the pathogenesis of human rotavirus infection during antibiotic treatment, malnutrition, vitamin A deficiency and after probiotic supplementation as well as investigating immune components of the mammary gland and their influence on neonatal immune health.
Cody Nelson, PhD
MD-PhD Graduate Student, MTSP/MGM
Cody defended his PhD relating to the role of antibodies in protection against HCMV acquisition and congenital disease in April 2018. He is currently taking an additional research year in Kenya, examining the epidemiology of congenital CMV infection in syphilis-infected, pregnant women. In addition, Cody is leading a study to investigate the immunogenicity of next-generation HCMV vaccines in rabbits.
Assay specialties: ELISA, BAMA, Neutralization, Next Generation Sequencing, BAC cloning, Protein/antibody production
Tulika Singh
PhD Graduate Student, Department Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Tulika works with our collaborators in Dr. Reynaldo Dietze's laboratory in Vitoria, Brazil in studying antibody-based immune protection against Zika virus in the setting of primary and secondary infections that are required to develop effective immune-based therapeutics.
Assay specialties: Zika and dengue antibody analysis, B cell characterizoation
Jui-Lin Chen (Fouda Lab)
PhD Graduate Student, Department of Immunology
Jui-Lin is co-mentored by Dr. Giny Fouda, and Dr. Joel Collier, a professor in Duke Biomedical Engineering. His graduate studies will characterize an HIV vaccine engineered with self-assembling peptide nanofibers and will focus on solving the mechanism of the enhancement of immune response elicited by that engineered HIV vaccine
Assay specialties: ELISA, Nanofiber production, flow
Jenny Jenks
MD-PhD Graduate Student, MTSP/MGM
Jennifer's graduate studies will examine the vaccine immunology of congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) and will focus on epitope target and antibody functions protective of CMV acquisition, as well as mechanisms of viral immune evasion. Her projects involve the use of clinical samples, nonhuman primate models, and other animal models of congenital CMV transmission.
Assay specialties: Flow cytometry, Western Blots, ELISA, Neutralization assays, Cell culture.
Claire Otero
PhD Graduate Student, Department of Pathology
Claire be working with both CMV and Rotavirus with a general theme of maternal antibodies as immune correlates and in the context of infant vaccine interference. Project updates coming soon....
Assay specialties: TBD
Sherry (Hsuan-Yuan) Wang
PhD Graduate Student, Department of Immunology
Sherry is currently working on 2 projects focusing on HCMV glycoprotein B (gB). She will investigate whether different genotypes of gB mRNA-LNP (lipid nanoparticle) vaccine could provide increasing breadth and magnitude targeting HCMV. Meanwhile, she is curious whether glycans would influence IgG binding ability to gB.
Eleanor Semmes
MD-PhD Graduate Student, MTSP/MGM
Eleanor's graduate studies, co-mentored by Dr. Kyle M. Walsh, will investigate the impact of congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) on the fetal immune system including humoral and cellular immunity. Her project will also examine the novel association between congenital CMV and acute lymphoblastic leukemia
Maria Dennis
Laboratory Research Analyst
Maria's main projects center on the development of a maternal/pediatric vaccine to prevent mother-child transmission of HIV and Zika.
Assay Specialties: ELISA, BAMA, Neutralization
Grace Li (Fouda Lab)
Research Staff (Fouda Lab)
Grace is helping to characterize HIV-specific antibody responses in infected children to help develop Env-specific monoclonal antibodies and compare to results in infected adults. She is also assessing how infants respond to HIV vaccines differently than adults and how adjuvants can enhance immune responses in infants. In addition, she works on measuring antibodies against vaccines commonly administered to infants in large cohorts of pediatric samples.
Assay specialties: BAMA, ELISA, glycan analysis, FcR binding assay, PVMA, complement activation, tissue processing
Helen Webster
Research Staff
Helen works with our collaborators in Dr. Reynaldo Dietze's laboratory in Vitoria, Brazil in studying antibody-based immune protection against Zika virus in the setting of primary and secondary infections that are required to develop effective immune-based therapeutics as well as Zika vaccine study with Dr. Koen Van Rompay at UC-Davis, and a rotavirus project for the Gates Foundation.
Assay specialties: Zika and dengue antibody analysis, B cell characterization, whole virion ELISAs, virus production, and infected cell binding assay.
Joshua Tu
Research Staff
Joshua is investigating the ability of maternally-derived broadly neutralizing HIV env-specific antibodies to impact the frequency of vertical HIV transmission and is also involved in our HIVRAD non-human primate studies. Joshua also leads our protein production team
Assay Specialties: Protein Production, Plasmid Preparation, Antibody Production, Neutralization Assays, Tissue Processing, ADCP
Jesse Mangold
Research Staff
Jesse is helping to design maternal HIV-1 vaccine strategies through re-analysis of a historical phase I study of HIV Env immunization in HIV-infected pregnant women and assessment of next-generation vaccine candidates in non-human primate models. Jesse recently graduated from Duke University in May 2019 with a B.S. in Biology & Global Health.
Assay Specialties: Plasmid, Protein, & Antibody Production, Neutralization Assays, Tissue Processing, ELISA, Single Genome Amplification
Emilie Uffman
Research Staff (Fouda Lab)
Emilie graduated from Davidson College this year with a B.S. in Biology and a Minor in Health and Human Values and premed concentration
She will be working on the protein production team.
Tyler Steppe
Research Staff
Tyler graduated in May 2019 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with a B.S. in Biology.
Tyler is working withe the CMV and Rotavirus teams and will be helping with ELISA binding, and other immunologic assays.
Eric Rochat
Research Staff
Eric recently graduated from Boston University with a Bachelor's in Biology with a concentration in Cell Biology, Molecular Biology and Genetics.
Eric is working with the CMV and Rotavirus team performing qPCR and other immunologic assays.