Alumni

Samantha (Sam) is a self-confessed bird nerd who brought the highly unusual but just right combination of field ecology and lab immunology and neuroscience experience to all Graham Group projects.

Esther is an expert on the immunoepidemiology of dengue, especially in vulnerable groups such as pregnant women. As a Global Health Program Postdoctoral Scholar at Princeton, she expanded her research program in this area, especially in collaboration with research groups in Colombia, and built new projects in infectious disease epidemiology. We’re delighted to follow and support her progress, and in the meantime we can attest that Esther makes a mean kombucha.

Gugu is an expert on maternal and child nutrition who has completed projects in Zimbabwe, South Africa, and beyond. As a Global Health Program Postdoctoral Scholar at Princeton, she investigated malnutrition and child health in Laikipia, Kenya, in collaboration with Mpala Research Centre and other organizations. We’re very excited to follow and support her progress! She is now a Lecturer in Global Health at Oxford University.

Stephen brought expertise on genomics and adaptive evolution of pinnipeds to our project on immune systems of northern elephant seals (on which we’re collaborating with Prof Bridgett vonHoldt and Dr. Frances Gulland). He also held an amazing NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship to study historical specimens of pinnipeds, some over 1000 years old, held in museum collections. He is piecing together the pinniped puzzle in continued collaboration with us. He is now a Research Assistant Professor at UC-Berkeley.

Arthur brought expertise on experimental evolution of hosts and parasites to graduate school, clearly revealing that he is both a patient soul and a motivated scientist. He then chose to hone his theory skills and developed novel analytical approaches to help make sense of diverse serological datasets, making important contributions to immunoepidemiology and public health. He also kept the lab apprised of all the latest in music and merriment!

When Ramya joined the lab as Research Specialist, for the first time in Graham Group history, our parasitological expertise included nematodes of plant hosts! Plus Ramya had studied within-host and transmission dynamics of influenza. She therefore brought an amazing array of talents and expertise to bear on the research of the group. She left the lab to start a Ph.D. program in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at The University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio.

Alec is fascinated by life history evolution and the multivariate drivers of variation in immune phenotype. He brings phylogenetic, comparative, and behavioral perspectives to generate broad understanding of the diversity of life histories and immunological strategies that hosts exhibit. During graduate school, he was especially interested in sexual dimorphism in immune function and the immunological effects of social life. Alec headed off to Germany to become a postdoctoral researcher in the Max Planck lab of Jenny Tung.

Jerry is an expert on the complex determinants of maternal and child health in resource-limited settings. He is also a registered nurse. He thus brings both scientific and clinical perspectives to bear upon public health projects on mother-to-child HIV transmission, access to clean water, and breastfeeding. Jerry came to Princeton as a postdoc via the Global Health Program. Because his biological research interests align so well with ours, especially on the interacting perils of infectious diseases and malnutrition, we learned a great deal from Jerry. He is now an Associate Professor of Nursing at UCSF.

Liana has a very exotic background in wildlife parasitology: for her Master’s degree, she studied parasites of none other than Tasmanian Devils!  For her Ph.D., she investigated co-infection and parasite-vaccine interactions in other, equally charismatic wild animals (those clever raccoons), and was co-advised by Andy Dobson. She is now a freelance science writer.

Courtney is a co-infection specialist who led fieldwork at MLBS to assess resilience of hosts to viral infections. Her interests included the ecology of within-host interactions among parasites and the epidemiological consequences of anthelmintic treatments.