Research Interests: Using protein engineering and multi-targeting antibodies in the context of human cancers and other pathologies. He is particularly interested in targeting the differential clinical response of immunotherapies and chimeric-antigen receptor (CAR) cells in solid vs. liquid tumors. Using natural ligands and clinically tested antibodies, he has recently focused on unraveling the unusual apoptotic regulatory motifs, and immunomodulatory cancer signaling pathways downstream of solid tumor enriched death receptor-5 (DR5). For testing hypothesis-driven tumor therapeutics approaches, he extensively uses ovarian and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) models in the lab. He is also eager and interested in dual-specificity CAR targeting approaches in ovarian and TNBC models along with SARS-CoV-2 spike processing (S0-S1/S2) inhibition strategies in viral-producing cells.
Assistant Professor / CAMPOS Faculty Scholar / Microbiology and Molecular Genetics
Microbiology and Molecular Genetics
Research Interests: Understanding the molecular mechanisms that mediate the interactions between enteric pathogens, the gut microbiota, and the intestinal epithelium.
Research Interests: Synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, and bioprocess engineering to address critical challenges in agriculture, energy, environment, and health
Research Interests: Involves leveraging insights from pathogen studies to enhance the understanding of host cellular processes. His lab primarily focuses on identifying the virulence mechanisms that drive Pseudomonas aeruginosa pathogenesis in wound infections, as well as investigating the eukaryotic host responses aimed at controlling these infections.
Research Interests: We have long appreciated the role that neutrophils play as first responders of the immune system during microbial infections. New evidence is emerging on the transcriptomic and phenotypic diversity of this highly abundant circulating white blood cell. In the Diaz-Ochoa lab we combine classical immunological techniques with a systems approach to gain mechanistic insights on the contributions of neutrophil diversity in host responses to bacterial infections.
Research Interests: Diet, gut microbiome, GI health in Humans. Application of bioinformatics, ML, AI to understand the relationship of diet and/or gut microbiome with human health.
