Dr. Orihuela obtained his Bachelor of Science Degree from Baylor University in 1996. He subsequently earned his PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston where he was a Kempner Scholar. From 2001 to 2005, Dr. Orihuela completed his postdoctoral research training in the Department of Infectious Diseases at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis TN. He returned to Texas in 2005, as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology ...
Since 1992, I have played a significant role in the development and provision of bioinformatics support and resources at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). I am currently Director of Informatics for the UAB Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS), an NIH/NCATS Clinical and Translational Science Award site; Director of the UAB AIDS Center (CFAR) Bioinformatics Facility; and Director of the Bioinformatics Core for the UAB Microbiome Facility. As Director of these Informat...
Frances (Fran) Lund completed her undergraduate studies in Microbiology at the University of Notre Dame (B.S., cum laude, 1987). She performed her graduate work with Dr. Ronald B. Corley in the Department of Microbiology at Duke University. She obtained her Ph.D. in Immunology in 1992 and went on to a post-doctoral immunology fellowship in Dr. Maureen Howard’s group at DNAX Research Institute in Palo Alto, CA. In 1997 she moved to the Trudeau Institute, a basic biomedical infectious disease rese...
The main goal of Dr Adrie JC Steyn’s research group is to understand the mechanisms whereby Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) persist for decades without causing disease, to then suddenly explode.
The Steyn Group is currently working on several projects centered on host gasotransmitters such as nitric oxide (NO), carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen sulphide (H2S), and M. tuberculosis redox homeostasis and bioenergetics, the role it plays in latency and persistence of the mycoba...
Dr. Orihuela obtained his Bachelor of Science Degree from Baylor University in 1996. He subsequently earned his PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston where he was a Kempner Scholar. From 2001 to 2005, Dr. Orihuela completed his postdoctoral research training in the Department of Infectious Diseases at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis TN. He returned to Texas in 2005, as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology ...
Carrie B. Coleman obtained her B.S. with a concentration in Microbiology at the University of Tennessee at Martin in 2002. As a graduate student she joined the lab of Dr. Scott Tibbetts in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at LSU Health Sciences Center – Shreveport. Her work in Dr. Tibbetts lab involved utilizing a murine gammaherpesvirus, MHV68, as an in vivo model to characterize the role of developing B cells in the maintenance of viral latency. She obtained her Ph.D. in virology in...
Dr. Chaplin completed his undergraduate education at Harvard University in 1973, then undertook graduate training in the MD/PhD program at Washington University, graduating in 1980. He completed two years of Internal Medicine Residency at U of Texas/Southwestern Medical School, Parkland Memorial Hospital. His post-doctoral research training was with Dr. J.G. Seidman in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, studying the genetics of the murine major histocompatibility complex. In 1...
My research has focused on the metabolism of Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide (NAD), the bioactive form of the vitamin niacin, and the roles that NAD-utilizing enzymes and NAD-derived molecules play in modulating cellular life/death decisions and inflammatory responses following oxidative stress. My interests are in basic and translational research aimed at (i) validating NAD metabolism as a therapeutic target, and (ii) discovering new therapies for the treatment of diseases as diverse as cance...
Since 1992, I have played a significant role in the development and provision of bioinformatics support and resources at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). I am currently Director of Informatics for the UAB Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS), an NIH/NCATS Clinical and Translational Science Award site; Director of the UAB AIDS Center (CFAR) Bioinformatics Facility; and Director of the Bioinformatics Core for the UAB Microbiome Facility. As Director of these Informat...
Frances (Fran) Lund completed her undergraduate studies in Microbiology at the University of Notre Dame (B.S., cum laude, 1987). She performed her graduate work with Dr. Ronald B. Corley in the Department of Microbiology at Duke University. She obtained her Ph.D. in Immunology in 1992 and went on to a post-doctoral immunology fellowship in Dr. Maureen Howard’s group at DNAX Research Institute in Palo Alto, CA. In 1997 she moved to the Trudeau Institute, a basic biomedical infectious disease rese...
Welcome to the Hu Lab!
Meet Hui Hu, Ph.D., an immunologist focusing on transcriptional regulation of adaptive immunity—Tfh cell differentiation, GC responses, CD8+ T cell quiescence/activation, T cell responses, immune memory and vaccines.
Hu joined the Department of Microbiology at UAB in May, 2014. He was an Associate Professor at the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia. Before Hu moved to the Wistar Institute, he was an instructor in the Department of Pediatrics at Harvard’s Children...
Obtained his B.S degree in Chemistry at Birzeit University in Palestine (1996), M.S degree in Bioinorganic Chemistry at Bergen University in Norway (1998; advisor: Dr. Einar Sletten), and a Ph.D degree in Bioinorganic Chemistry at Emory University in Atlanta (2002; advisor: Dr. Luigi Marzilli). His M.S. and Ph.D studies focused on studying the interactions of cisplatin, a leading anticancer drug, with DNA by using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and other biophysical methods. Dr. Saad's postdoc...
Janusz H.S. Kabarowski received his B.Sc. degree in Biochemistry from University College London, UK. He was awarded a Ph.D. degree from the Leukaemia Research Fund centre at The Institute of Cancer Research (Chester Beatty Laboratories) in London in 1997. Dr. Kabarowski subsequently conducted postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Owen Witte at UCLA. Dr. Kabarowski joined the Department of Microbiology at UAB as an Assistant Professor in 2003 and has a secondary faculty appointment in the De...
I performed my undergraduate studies in biochemistry and molecular biology at Pennsylvania State University (B.Sc, 2002). For graduate studies I trained with John Kearney, Ph.D. at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (Birmingham, AL). My thesis research focused on understanding the development of serologic and B cell memory to the T cell independent, type 2 antigen alpha 1->3-dextran. After obtaining my Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology, I took a 4 year hiatus from research to obtain my d...
I am a board-certified gynecologic pathologist with 21-year expertise in light-, immunofluorescence-, and high-resolution confocal-microscopy. I work as a staff pathologist at the UAB hospital and examine surgical tissues and provide the diagnoses. In my research projects, I have been involved in numerous collaborative studies and evaluated human, mouse and rat tissues. Pathologic findings have ranged from bacterial and viral infection, immune complex deposition and histopathology of female repr...
I have been an assistant professor in Microbiology at UAB since January of 2016. My interests are focused on the molecular mechanisms by which bacteria sense and respond to changes in their environments. My lab is currently exploring how bacteria regulate inorganic polyphosphate synthesis in response to starvation and how pro-inflammatory enterobacteria use the RclA, RclB, and RclC proteins to resist antimicrobial oxidants used by the innate immune system to kill bacteria during inflammation.
One of the most prominent features of M. tuberculosis is its unusual outer membrane that plays a crucial role in the intrinsic drug resistance and in survival of M. tuberculosis in vivo. This membrane is functionalized by intriguing proteins which provide essential functions such as nutrient uptake, have new structures and likely function by novel mechanisms. We discovered the first outer membrane channel protein in mycobacteria, obtained the first crystal structure of a mycobacterial outer memb...
Dr. Thompson received her graduate training in Marvin Wickens’ laboratory on translational control during early development. As a post-doctoral fellow in Peter Sarnow's laboratory, she developed her expertise in internal ribosome entry site (IRES) mediated mechanisms of translation initiation. She is interested in understanding how IRESs recruit ribosomes and initiate translation. She discovered that a ribosomal protein S25 (eS25/RPS25) on the small ribosomal subunit was essential for IRES-media...
My lab aims to understand the structure-function relationships involved in the processes of viral replication, virus-host interactions, capsid structure, polynucleotide synthesis and antibody-antigen complex formation. Toward this goal, we have used structural techniques (cryo-electron microscopy, x-ray crystallography and small angle x-ray scattering) and biochemistry to study: viral proteins from negative strand RNA viruses (NSV: influenza A, mumps, rabies virus, VSV), retroviruses (HIV), coro...
Dr. Raman’s laboratory interrogates molecular and cellular mechanisms driving the immunopathogenesis of autoimmune diseases with a special emphasis on multiple sclerosis (MS) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Within this are of research, the current studies focus on molecular mechanisms underlying activation and differentiation of effector T cells, B cells and innate cells in the pathogenesis of these autoimmune diseases. Current investigations involve human immunology bridged with mouse models to ...
Dr. Elson received his M.D. from Washington University in St. Louis, trained in Internal Medicine at New York Hospital/Cornell, then did his Gastroenterology fellowship at the University of Chicago. After doing full-time research in immunology at N.I.H., he joined the Faculty of the Division of Gastroenterology at the Medical College of Virginia. He moved to the University of Alabama at Birmingham to become Director of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, and subsequently served a...
David Bedwell, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, completed his undergraduate studies in Microbiology at Purdue University (B.S. with Honors, 1979). His graduate work in Molecular Biology was done with Dr. Masayasu Nomura at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, (Ph.D., 1985). He then carried out a postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Scott Emr's laboratory at Caltech. Dr. Bedwell joined the faculty at UAB in 1988. At the national level, he is in a second 5...
Dr. Debasish Chattopadhyay received his BS in Chemistry and MS in Biochemistry from Calcutta University, India. He obtained Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from Jadavpur University, India in 1989. He conducted his postdoctoral research at the Upjohn Company in Michigan. This work was part of an NIH funded collaborative effort involving several academic institutions and pharmaceutical industries for the discovery of potent antiretroviral drugs. Dr. Chattopadhyay's work focussed on the structure-functio...
James F. Collawn, Professor of Cell Biology, received his B.S. degree from the University of South Carolina and his Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from the Medical University of South Carolina (1986). He completed his postdoctoral training in cellular immunology at The Scripps Research Institute and in cell biology at The Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. After working for two years as a Staff Scientist at The Salk Institute, Dr. Collawn joined the Department of Cell Biology in 1993. Dr. Col...
Dr. James F. George is a Professor of Surgery for the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery. He is a molecular and cellular biologist who has worked in the field of heart failure and transplantation for more than 20 years. He is actively involved in researching the basic biology of heart failure and transplant rejection, the development of new drugs, and clinical outcomes after cardiac surgery and transplantation.
His studies are concentrated in transplantation immunobiology, particularly ...
Wegener's granulomatosis, an anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-positive systemic small vessel vasculitide, is characterized by inflammatory lesions with granuloma formation in the upper and lower airways, pauci-immune glomerulonephritis, and anti-proteinase 3 autoantibodies. Although Wegener's granulomatosis is considered idiopathic, there has been substantial interest in environmental factors as either etiologic or accelerating risk factors, with Staphylococcus aureus having attracted...
Dr. Leavenworth joined UAB Neurosurgery as an Assistant Professor on Oct. 1, 2016. Previously, Dr. Leavenworth was at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard University. Dr. Leavenworth completed medical school at Nantong University (NTU) School of Medicine, Nantong, Jiangsu, China. She then finished her PhD training in molecular biology, microbiology and biochemistry with a focus on immunology at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. She was at Harvard Medical School since 2009 ...
John C. Kappes (b. 1957), Associate Professor of Medicine and Microbiology, completed his undergraduate studies in biology at Thomas More College (B.A. in Biology, 1981) and received his Ph.D. in Microbiology and Experimental Medicine from St. Thomas Institute in 1986. Dr. Kappes completed his postdoctoral fellowship studying the molecular pathogenesis of human immunodeficiency viruses and joined the UAB faculty in 1989.
Dr. Mountz is a Professor of Medicine and Director of the UAB Recombinant Inbred Strain Facility. Dr. Mountz is the Co-Director of the UAB Bone Center, the UAB Center for Aging, Basic Biology Component, and is a Physician at the Birmingham Veterans Administration Medical Center. Dr. Mountz is the recipient of the J. W. & Virginia Goodwin-Warren D. Blackburn, Jr. Research Chair in Rheumatology (2002) and recipient of the Max Cooper Award for Excellence in Research (2003). Dr. Mountz was designate...
Lewis Shi received his MD in preventive medicine, MS in toxicology, and PhD in neurotoxicology. Upon graduation, he worked as a postdoctoral scholar at University of Wisconsin-Madison where he identified a novel role of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) signaling in innate immune response against Listeria monocytogenes infection. He then joined St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital where he was among the first to show that the HIF-1a-glycolysis pathway functions as a metabolic checkpoint in re...
Dr. Stoll is a pediatric rheumatologist who earned his MD and PhD at Upstate Medical University (Syracuse, NY) in 2001, followed by completion of residency in pediatrics at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in 2004 and fellowship in pediatric rheumatology at the Childrens Hospital Boston in 2007. At the completion of his fellowship, he took a staff position at the University of Texas at Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas, TX), where he earned an MSCS degree. In 2011, he moved to the Univers...
1989-1991 Prediploma Fellow, Institute for Biotechnology, University of Würzburg, Germany 1992-1997 Predoctoral Fellow, Institute for Immunobiology, University of Würzburg, Germany 1998-2001 Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Alabama at Birmingham 2001-2003 Research Instructor, University of Alabama at Birmingham 2003-2005 Research Assistant Professor, University of Alabama at Birmingham 2005- 2008 Assistant Professor, University of Alabama at Birmingham 2005-present Associate Scientist, UAB CFA...
Our laboratory concentrates on understanding the immune correlates of protection against HIV disease progression with a focus on cell medicated immune responses (CD4 and CD8 T cells). We are utilizing a variety of techniques in our laboratory to evaluate the quality of HIV-specific T cell responses observed in patients who represent the entire spectra of HIV disease. These assays include an in vitro HIV killing and an in vitro HIV viral suppression assay. These assays measure the actual clearanc...
A graduate of Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts, Dr. Davis completed medical school at the University of Alabama School of Medicine (UASOM), where he also served his internship, residency, and the ABIM academic subspecialty research fellowship clinical investigator pathway in Hematology/Oncology. He is Professor of Medicine, Microbiology, and Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics in the division of Hematology/Oncology. He is board certified in Hematology.
Richard Whitley, M.D., is a Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics, Professor of Microbiology, Medicine and Neurosurgery; Loeb Eminent Scholar Chair in Pediatrics; Co-Director, Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases; Vice-Chair, Department of Pediatrics; Senior Scientist, Department of Gene Therapy; Scientist, Cancer Research and Training Center; Faculty, Gene Therapy Center; Associate Director for Drug Discovery and Development and Senior Leader, Pediatric Oncology Program, O’Neal Comprehensi...
Robert P. Kimberly, MD, a native of New Haven, Conn., received his Doctor of Medicine degree from Harvard Medical School after receiving a baccalaureate degree magna cum laude from Princeton University and a baccalaureate / master's degree from the University of Oxford, Oxford, England. Dr. Kimberly's achievements and honors include election to Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University, a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University, a "First" class degree from Oxford, and election to both the America...
Research in the Marquez-Lago lab combines (wet lab) experiments involving bioengineering, micro- and molecular biology techniques, with (drylab) data analysis, AI, modeling and simulation techniques. In a nutshell, we investigate (1) host-microbiota interactions in complex human diseases, (2) microbial multi-drug resistance, and (3) gene expression and chromatin organization. In addition, we study (4) the role and effect of mechanical forces ('mechanobiology') and cell compartmentalization in pa...
I am originally from Southern part of India and came to Duke University to study for my Ph.D. in Biochemistry. I was very lonely at Duke and went through a major cultural shock — my English was not fluent and also, because I am a vegetarian, I didn’t know what or where to eat. I transferred to Southern Illinois University and worked with an outstanding scientist and very friendly group of graduate students. I received my Ph.D. in Biochemistry there; my project dealt with organisms and mechanisms...
Dr. W. Edward Swords received a B.S. in microbiology from Auburn University, followed by a M.S. from Mississippi State University. He completed his PhD studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1996. After an ASM/NCID fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Swords carried out postdoctoral work with Dr. Michael Apicella at the University of Iowa, studying the bacterial opportunist nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae. In 2002, he joined the faculty in the Dep...
