David Lewinsohn Lab Members
Research Associates
Gwendolyn Swarbrick
Gwendolyn, who goes by Lynne, received her B.S. in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from the University of California, San Diego in 1999. She has worked in David and Deborah Lewinsohn's laboratories since July, 2001, starting out as a Research Assistant 2 when there were only 4 people in the combined Lewinsohn lab. She currently manages several projects in the lab, including the single cell sequencing/T cell cloning projects on multiple grants and is the keeper of long term lab information. She is also the Grants Coordinator for the Center for Global Child Health Research , part of the School of Medicine and directed by David Lewinsohn. The goal of this Center is to improve outcomes in child health worldwide through advancing collaborative research in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of bacterial infection.
Email: swarbric@ohsu.edu
Meghan Cansler
Meghan received her B.S. in Biology from Washington State University in 2004 and began working as a Research Assistant with the Lewinsohn Lab in November of that same year. Her past projects have included two NIH T cell epitope discovery projects which focused on CD8 classically restricted T cells as well as a grant funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that looked at MR1 T cell restricted ligands as possible TB vaccine targets. Her current work in the lab focuses on T cell cloning and characterization for multiple grants to define and phenotype MR1 restricted T cells as well as the overall CD3+ T cell response to TB.
Email: canslerm@ohsu.edu
Aneta Worley
After graduating with B.S. in Chemistry from Portland State University in 2009, Aneta started working as a TA at the University and taught introduction to Chemistry lab. She also worked as a Research Assistant in a Physical Chemistry Lab of prof. Shankar B. Rananavare. Her project focused on alveolar air-water interface and phase diagrams of membrane lipids with surfactant proteins. For the next two years, she worked in an Ocular Immunology Lab at OHSU, where her research projects focused on Degenerative Retinopathies and Autoimmune Uveitis. In January of 2012 she joined the lab of Dr. Marielle Gold working on an Airway model project studying tissue samples and cells derived from human airway and lung samples. In 2018, she joined the lab of Dr. David Lewinsohn on a related project characterizing human lung T cells.
Email: worleya@ohsu.edu
Katie Rott
Katie earned her BS in Wildlife Ecology in 2013 and her MS in Zoology in 2016 from the University of Wisconsin. In 2017, she made the switch to immunology and began working at OHSU. Her first position OHSU was in the lab of Dr. Ann Hill, in which she investigated memory T cell inflation after infection with murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV). She later transitioned into the lab of Dr. Bahareh Ajami and studied microglia in neurodegenerative diseases, such as ALS. She has now returned to the world of T cells in the Lewinsohn Lab and is using flow cytometry and 10X single-cell technology to characterize the T cells in the blood and lungs of those with and without tuberculosis. Outside of work, she enjoys backpacking, rockhounding and accumulating house plants.
Email: rottk@ohsu.edu
Assistant Staff Scientists
Corinna Kulicke
Corinna is an assistant staff scientist in Dr. David Lewinsohn's lab where she investigates the mechanisms that govern the intracellular trafficking of MR1 to better understand how this non-classical cousin of MHC-I presents mycobacterial antigens. She did her undergraduate training in Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Jacobs University Bremen in Germany and then moved to Oxford, UK for her doctorate under the mentorship of Mariolina Salio, Paul Klenerman, and Enzo Cerundolo. During her time there, she helped start Oxford Hands-On Science, a science outreach society which takes interactive experiments into schools and public venues to inspire the next generation of scientists. Corinna loves to share her fascination with immunology with others and is especially excited about using graphics to make its complexity accessible.
Email: kulicke@ohsu.edu
Shogo Soma
Shogo graduated from Rakuno Gakuen University with a DVM degree in 2012. He received his Ph.D. in Molecular Microbiology/Immunology from Mie University in 2018. His prior research was on recombinant BCG expressing dominant negative of SOCS1 as a new TB vaccine candidate at Tsukuba Primate Research Center as a Ph.D. student. He joined the Lewinsohn Lab in 2019. He is studying the effector function of MR1 restricted T cells, especially from the lung, in fighting against Mycobacterial infection.
Email: soma@ohsu.edu
Research Assistants
Jessie Peterson
Jessie graduated from Texas A&M University in 2019 with a BS in Anthropology. She has been a research assistant in the Lewinsohn lab since 2020 working on MR1 antigen processing and presentation with Dr. Elly Karamooz.
Email: petjessi@ohsu.edu
Chance Lemon
Chance graduated from Oregon State University in June 2020 with a B.S. in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology. He joined the Lewinsohn lab in October 2020 and currently works with Dr. Corinna Kulicke and Dr. Shogo Soma on the intracellular trafficking on MR1 and the effector function of MR1 restricted T cells, respectively.
Email: lemonc@ohsu.edu
Graduate Students
Dylan Kain
Dylan Kain graduated from Queen’s University in 2011, before starting medical school at the University of Toronto, which he completed in 2015. He then undertook his general internal medicine residency, which he completed in 2019, and his infectious disease fellowship, finishing in 2020. He also received his diploma of tropical medicine and hygiene in 2020 from the Gorgas Course in Peru. Following this he completed a yearlong infection control fellowship, helping with the pandemic response, along with a tropical medicine fellowship in Toronto. He joined the Lewinsohn lab in 2021, starting a Ph.D. studying the memory potential of MAIT cells, and the ligands they recognize, with the aim to better inform future tuberculosis vaccine development.
Email: kain@ohsu.edu
Allison Tammen
Allison graduated from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo with a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology in 2019. She received her Master of Science in Microbiology from San Francisco State University in 2021, where she studied the role of neonatal myeloid subsets in modulating early life immune responses to commensals in the lab of Tiffany Scharschmidt at the University of California, San Francisco. Allison matriculated into the Program in Biomedical Sciences Ph.D. program at OHSU in 2021 and joined the Lewinsohn Lab as a graduate student affiliated with the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. Currently, her thesis research is focused on investigating the role of endosomal calcium signaling in MR1 presentation to MAIT cells.
Email: tammen@ohsu.edu
Joyce Se-Jin Kim
Joyce earned her B.A. in Biology from Carleton College in 2017. Then, she investigated the role of immune cells in allergic lung inflammation under Dr. Patrick Burkett and Dr. Vijay Kuchroo at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Joyce matriculated into the M.D./Ph.D. program at OHSU in 2020 and joined the Lewinsohn Lab as a graduate student in the Program in Biomedical Sciences. Her thesis project is to understand the mechanism of calcium sensors in MR1 antigen presentation.
Email: kimseji@ohsu.edu
Past Lab Members
Postdoctoral Alumni
Erin Meermeier Ph.D. (2011-2018)
Mardi Boer M.D., Ph.D. (2016-2017)
Ruth Napier Ph.D. (2014-2015)
Prabhat Sharma Ph.D. (2011-2015)
Wilmon Grant Ph.D. (2011-2015)
Melanie Harriff Ph.D. (2008-2011)
Colleen Noviello Ph.D. (2007-2009)
Marielle Gold Ph.D. (2003-2007)
Marisa Frieder Ph.D. (2002-2007)
Clinical fellow alumni
Nick Stucky M.D. (2017-2019)
Elly Karamooz M.D. (2014-2016)
Tarek Eid M.D. (2009-2011)
Amie Tucker M.D. (2009-2011)
Heather Offenstein M.D. (2007-2009)
Melissa Nyendak M.D. MHS (2005-2008)
Brent Cutshall M.D. (2003-2005)
Karen Wesenberg M.D. (2002-2003)
Graduate student alumni
Gitanjali Narayanan (2012-2019)
Eisa Mahyari (2015-2018)
Erin (Riscoe) Meermeier (2012-2016)
Carlos Siekavizza-Robles (2011-2015)
Jeff Grotzke (2001-2008)