Our People
Team Members
Lead
Peter Zandstra
Co-applicants
Anna Blakney, Annie Ciernia, Pieter Cullis, Yanpu He, Hongshen Ma, Kelly McNagny, Alice Mui, Maria Tokuyama, Carolina Tropini, Nozomu Yachie
Faculty Collaborators
Yossef Av-Gay, Horacio Bach, Phillip Domeier, Laura Evgin, Ken Harder, Pauline Johnson, Govind Kaigala, Lisa Osborne, Morgan Roberts, Nika Shakiba, Laura Sly, Jim Sun, Simon Wisnovsky
Partners
ImmunoE Trainees
Graduate Students | 2027 Cohort
Amir Golzan
Program: PhD, Experimental Medicine
High-dimensional immunology and computational modeling to uncover how early respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection shapes infant immune development, revealing mechanisms that can inform future vaccine design
Anjali Parthasarathy
Program: MSc, Pharmaceutical Sciences
Functional Mapping of the Human T-cell Glycome Using Base Editing Screens
Armin Faghihi Taleghani
Program: MSc, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Designing Lipid Nanoparticle-Based Tools to Engineer Macrophages In Vivo for Solid Tumor Immunotherapy
Asana Imanpour
Program: PhD, Interdisciplinary Oncology
Tumour-Immune Interactions in Resistance to Neoadjuvant Therapies in Muscle-Invasive Bladder Cancer
Catherine Ko
Program: MSc, Biomedical Engineering
Developing a smart bioprocess control system that monitors and adjusts iPSC differentiation toward hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells in real-time
Daniella Liao
Program: MSc, Interdisciplinary Oncology
Exploring B-cell Responses in Lung Cancer
Juliana Montoya Sanchez
Program: PhD, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
New RNA delivery techniques for examining microglial histone lactylation in vitro
Kisa Naqvi
Program: MSc, Experimental Medicine
Engineering chimeric antigen receptor regulatory T cell (CAR Treg) therapy to prevent allograft rejection and induce immune tolerance
Natalie Chong
Program: MSc, Microbiology and Immunology
Novel drug against multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Maya Nathani-Sim
Program: MASc, Biomedical Engineering
Engineering bispecific natural killer cells to target cancer metabolic heterogeneity
Natalia Nayyar
Program: MSc, Experimental Medicine
Targeting podocalyxin for the treatment adverse-risk acute myeloid leukemia
Pegah Karimi
Program: PhD, Microbiology and Immunology
Developing mRNA-based cancer vaccines
Qing Ru Kong
Program: MSc, Experimental Medicine
Cell-based immunoengineering approach using engineered regulatory T cells as a therapy for ARDS
Sogand Golshahian
Program: MASc, Biomedical Engineering
Analysis of gene and protein expression data in patient cohorts with neurodegenerative and infectious diseases
Tithi Bhatt
Program: MSc, Microbiology and Immunology
Exploring B cell Selection in Germinal Centers Using Tonsil Organoids
Wanda Janaeska
Program: PhD, Biomedical Engineering
Next-generation cancer vaccines using self-amplifying RNA (saRNA)
Graduate Students | 2026 Cohort
Ali Koshyk
Program: MSc, Microbiology and Immunology
In vivo chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-macrophage immunotherapy for solid tumours using lipid nanoparticle delivery systems
Ceren Gulhan
Program: MSc, Interdisciplinary Oncology
Exploration of alternative RNA formats for the use of in vivo CAR T-cell therapy
Claire Sie
Program: PhD, Microbiology and Immunology
Understanding gut microbiome-endocrine signalling to design microbial therapeutics
Cynthia Huang
Program: MASc, Biomedical Engineering
Designing saRNA for gene editing and optimizing saRNA for delivery of therapeutic proteins
Grace Kuo
Program: PhD, Experimental Medicine
Exploring the therapeutic potential of stem cell-derived innate lymphoid cells in solid tumors and chronic inflammatory diseases
Imogen Porter
Program: PhD, Genome Science and Technology (GSAT)
Effects of Bowel Preparation on IBD Pathobiont Translocation
Jeff Yoon
Program: PhD, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Understanding the strand selection mechanism of miRNA and how it impacts the immune cell signaling
Katia Rosenflanz
Program: MSc, Biomedical Engineering
The development of a novel assay for multi-dimensional immune cell characterization
Kaye Soriano
Program: PhD, Biomedical Engineering
Developing RNA therapeutics towards the CNS for Neurogenesis
Lily Bertolo
Program: MSc, Microbiology and Immunology
Development of host-directed therapeutics to treat bacterial infections
Lucas Zhu
Program: MSc, Microbiology and Immunology
Studying a dietary fiber as a potential therapeutic for multiple sclerosis
Maggie Ma
Program: PhD, Experimental Medicine
Using a microbiome-cleavable glycoconjugate prodrug system to improve the delivery of anti-inflammatory small molecules
Megha Srinivas
Program: PhD, Biomedical Engineering
Engineering methods to study spatial tumor-immune cell interactions temporally through biopatterning
Parisa Nazari
Program: MSc, Biomedical Engineering
Coming soon.
Sam Khalilitousi
Program: MASc, Biomedical Engineering
Developing scalable machine-learning methods for cell segmentation and downstream analysis of spatial transcriptomics data
Sunny Chen
Program: PhD, Biomedical Engineering
Specializing in lipid nanoparticle research, RNA therapeutics, and immunonanomedicine.
Tae Kim
Program: PhD, Biomedical Engineering
Investigating how to improve LNP-RNA vaccines by analyzing the initial innate immune response they trigger; developing new therapies for asthma by finding ways to modulate the immune system's memory
Postdoctoral Fellows
Faezeh Borzooee
BC Cancer Research Centre
Faezeh is a postdoctoral fellow at BC Cancer, Terry Fox Laboratory, in Drs. Kuchenbauer/Rouhi’s lab working in collaboration with the lab of Dr. Mani Larijani at SFU. She investigates the roles of APOBECs in the metabolic rewiring of cancer cells, with a focus on myeloma but potential applicability to other cancers as well.
Harsimran Khara
Department of Surgery
Simran is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Alice Mui’s lab at UBC. Her research focuses on interleukin-10 receptor signaling and its anti-inflammatory potential in macrophages.
Jaime Korner
School of Biomedical Engineering
Jaime is a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory for Microtechnologies for Quantitative Biomedicine (uQB) under the supervision of Govind Kaigala. Her research aims to create a microfluidic device for urinary exosomal miRNA detection for early cancer screening.
Leah Hohman
Department of Microbiology and Immunology
Leah is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Lisa Osborne's lab. Leah aims to elucidate mechanisms between age-related alterations to the microbiome, intestinal immune populations, and the brain.
Mahlegha (Nasim) Ghavami Nodeh
Department of Pediatrics
Nasim is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Gregor Reid's lab. She is developing and optimizing GD2-targeted CAR-T cell therapies and radiolabeled antibody strategies for neuroblastoma
Nikko Jeffreys
School of Biomedical Engineering
Niko is a posdoctoral fellow in Dr. Peter Zandstra's lab. He studies T-cell engager systems pharmacology and childhood T-cell leukemogenesis.
Romaniya Zayats
Department of Surgery
Romaniya is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Megan Levings' lab. She studies Treg Immune Therapy Against GVHD.
Zach Morse
BC Cancer Research Centre
Zach is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Laura Evgin’s lab, where he is exploring genetic engineering to improve CAR T cell immunotherapies to treat aggressive lymphomas that resist conventional treatments.
Committees
Program Advisory Committee
Peter Zandstra
Head of SBME and lead applicant of ImmunoE CREATE, UBC
Jennifer Moody
VP of External Innovation in Genomic Medicine, Danaher Corporation
Sharon Louis
Senior VP, Research and Development, StemCell Technologies
Yoo Jin Park
Director, Biomanufacturing Hub Network training program, University of Toronto
Hao Yuan Kueh
Associate Professor, Dept of Immunobiology, Yale
Darrell Kopke
Exec Director & Site Lead, Creative Destruction Lab - Vancouver
Maggie Chopra
MD/PhD student, SBME, UBC
Management Committee
Pauline Johnson
Emerita Professor, Department Microbiology and Immunology, UBC
Alice Mui
Associate Professor, Department Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Department of Surgery, UBC
Yanpu He
Assistant Professor, School of Biomedical Engineering, UBC
Curriculum Development Committee
Alice Mui (Chair), Laura Sly, Yanpu He, Pauline Johnson, Kabir Bhalla, Sunny Chen
ImmunoT&E Trainee Committee
Abishek Wadhwa
Ali Koshyk
Bita Mojtahedzadeh
Catherine Ko
Faezeh Borzooee
Grace Kuo
Imogen Porter
Lily Bertolo
Lorenzo Lindo
Lucas Zhu
Maggie Chopra
Maggie Ma
Natalie Stewart
Qing Ru Kong
Sanchit Chopra
Sarah McPhedran
Tae Kim
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