Timothy Nice, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. Dr. Nice went to graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley, where he studied natural killer cell activation through protein-level stabilization of activating ligands by stress pathways in target cells. He went on to perform postdoctoral studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where he identified virus and host genes that determine the outcome of intestinal virus infection. In particular, Dr. Nice found that persistent viral infections in the intestine were controlled by a specialized type of immune effector called interferon lambda. The Nice Lab continues to study intestinal infections and how interferon lambda acts to protect from these pathogens. Additionally, the lab is interested in how the bacterial microbiota within our healthy intestine can impact the antiviral immune response and how this could become dysregulated in inflammatory bowel diseases.

Dr. Nice has mentored diverse trainees at the high school, undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral levels, including serving as a mentor to PREP scholar Bryan Ramirez (2023). He is director of the infectious diseases and immunology ‘hub’ within the Program in Biomedical Sciences (PBMS) graduate program, serves as academic mentor to PBMS students, and strives to provide opportunities within the biomedical sciences to scholars from all backgrounds.

Dr. Rauch is an Associate Professor at the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Oregon Health and Science University. She received her Doctorate (PhD) from the University of Salzburg in Austria, where she studied antimicrobial neuropeptides in the skin. She worked on interferons in intestinal inflammation and inflammasome mediated gastrointestinal pathogen defense in her postdoctoral research at the University of Vienna and during an Erwin-Schrödinger postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley. She received the Austrian Scientists and Scholars in the Northern Americas award, the UC Berkeley outstanding postdoc award and the Society of Mucosal Immunology Young Investigator award for her work showing rapid epithelial cell extrusion upon cytosolic pathogen detection by inflammasomes. Dr. Rauch started her own independent lab focusing on epithelial responses to pathogen infection in 2019. Their research uses genetic mouse models of in vivo infection as well as stem cell derived organoids as primary epithelial cell in vitro models. As a mentor, Dr. Rauch continuously educates herself through courses such as “culturally aware mentoring” and discussions with trainees as well as other mentors. She is also engaged in a pilot project to improve scientific peer review and publishing called discovery stack.