Louis j. Picker, MD

Professor
Dr. Picker obtained his BA in Bacteriology from UCLA, his MD from UCSF, before a residency in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology at Beth Israel Hospital and Harvard University School of Medicine, followed by a immunopathology and immunology research fellowship at Stanford University.  Dr. Picker’s scientific focus has been on adaptive immunity, widely studying the mechanisms of lymphocyte homing, thymic function, memory T cell differentiation, function and homeostasis, immune senescence, HIV/SIV pathogenesis, and T cell-mediated control of persistent agents (CMV, HIV/SIV, tuberculosis, malaria) in both human and non-human primate systems.  Since 2001, his lab has worked to develop effective vaccines and non-vaccine immunotherapies for HIV/SIV, has made paradigm-changing contributions to CMV virology and immunobiology that have enabled clinical development of CMV as a new type of vaccine platform, and has sought to understand the nature of the SIV/HIV reservoir and it susceptibility to immune clearance/control, which is key to the development of immune-based HIV cure strategies.

Dr. Picker is an avid motorcyclist, both on- and off-road.

Andrew Sylwester, PhD

Senior Staff Scientist
Andy obtained his BA in Chemistry/Biology/teaching from the U of Oregon, his PhD in Cell Biology from the U of Iowa, and then was a postdoctoral fellow at NIH NIAID, working on the membrane biophysics of HIV fusion events. Andy worked in biotech, supervising (among other projects) the cGMP manufacture of global HIV isolates for industry research.  He joined the Picker Lab in 2002, when there were only 5 other staffers. Andy is the Manager of the overall Picker Lab Group, oversees the operations of the laboratory facilities and the Inventory Management (Shoko Hagen) and Cytometry (Nick Hamilton, 4 cytometers) groups, performs process R&D for the overall group, is a founder-manager of the VGTI Quality System that enables our team to participate in clinical trials and industry-sponsored studies, and is the Director of the ONPRC Flow Cytometry Core (5 cytometers).

Andy has been married 4 decades, has 4 grown kids, is a cat person but liked his grumpy pet pig more, and enjoys cooking, woodworking, traveling, and tends to engage in regrettable construction projects.

Shoko I. Hagen, MS

Research Project Manager
Shoko obtained her Masters Degree in Microbiology from S. Dakota State University. She came to ONPRC to work as a molecular biologist for Dr. Toshiaki Kodama, then joined Louis Picker when he first established his lab in 1999. She has been involved in all aspects of Picker Lab activities.  Shoko is now responsible for all materials procurement and inventory management for the large, well-funded Picker Lab Group (Picker, Hansen, Okoye), and also some collaborating labs. Shoko’s team procures materials, accessions and manages the supply inventory, and tests, reformulates, and subaliquots biological reagents. Shoko is known by seemingly every vendor rep west of the Mississippi!

Nicklas A. Hamilton, MS

Research Associate
Nick obtained his BS in Microbiology from Oregon State University, and his Masters Degree in Biology from Portland State U.  Nick originally joined the Picker Lab in 2013 as a flow cytometer operator, then moved to Afam Okoye’s sample processing group. Nick left to get his MS and to work elsewhere, then re-joined our group in 2021. He is now both the leader of the Picker Lab Cytometry Group, a team of seven who operate four cytometers nearly every day of the year to keep up with the high sample output of the Picker Labs. Nick is also the Technical Assistant for the ONPRC Flow Core, which has 3 analyzers and two cell sorters.