Welcome to the Early Career Immunologists section of the CIS website! Information contained in this section is primarily directed at helping fellows and those early in their careers, advance in the field of immunology.
Shanmuganathan Chandrakasan, MD
Assistant Professor
Emory University School of Medicine, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta
Atlanta, GA
Dr. Chandrakasan is an Assistant Professor in Division of Bone Marrow Transplant at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Emory University School of Medicine. He completed his Hem/Onc/BMT fellowship training at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital with the focus on management of immune deficiency and immune dysregulation disorders. At Emory, he has been focusing on establishing immune dysregulation and Immunohematology clinic to offer comprehensive immune evaluation and management for patients with early onset or refractory multi-system autoimmune disorder. They are also building an active research program focusing on these diseases. Being a part of CIS has been a tremendous learning experience and the opportunity to interact first hand with the leaders in the field have been very enlightening for him. As a part of early career immunology committee, we hope to enhance the learning and networking opportunities for clinicians and researchers interested in immune defects.
Monica G. Lawrence, MD
Assistant Professor
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA
Dr. Lawrence was born in Colorado but grew up in Northern Virginia. After completing her undergraduate degree in Biology and Psychology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, she moved to St. Louis where she completed her medical degree and her residency in Internal Medicine at Washington University/Barnes Jewish Hospital. She met her husband, Kevin, in St. Louis and they moved to the DC area while she completed her fellowship training in Allergy and Immunology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH). From there, they moved to Charlottesville where she joined the faculty in the Division of Asthma Allergy and Immunology at the University of Virginia.
She enjoys spending time with her husband and two children, enjoying all the outdoor activities that beautiful Charlottesville has to offer, reading, and watching sports (in particular, college basketball and football, and pro football).
Joyce E. Yu, MD
Assistant Professor
Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center
New York, NY
Dr. Yu received her undergraduate degree in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her medical degree from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine (now Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) in New York, NY in 2002. She completed her pediatrics residency at Children’s Memorial Hospital (now Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago) at Northwestern University and her fellowship in allergy/immunology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She also completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Mount Sinai studying Toll-like receptor signaling and memory B cell development under the mentorship of Dr. Charlotte Cunningham-Rundles MD PhD.
She is currently an assistant professor of pediatrics at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center where she directs the food allergy program and is the director of the Food Allergy Research Education (FARE) Clinical Network center at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of New York-Presbyterian. She also evaluates patients for the SCID specialty care center at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of New York-Presbyterian. She has been an active member of the Early Career Immunologist (ECI, formerly NIT/FIT) committee in the CIS where she has served as the chair. She also has served as President of the New York Allergy and Asthma Society and and is currently chair of the New Allergist and Immunologist Assembly of the AAAAI. Her primary clinical and research interests include food allergy and primary immunodeficiencies.
Elena Hsieh, MD
Assistant Professor
Children's Hospital Colorado - University of Colorado School of Medicine
Aurora, CO
Dr. Hsieh earned her MD degree from University of California San Francisco (UCSF) in 2008. She completed a residency in pediatrics at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2011, and a fellowship in Allergy and Immunology at Stanford University in 2014. She continued her research and clinical work at Stanford University as an Instructor for an additional year. In 2015, Dr. Hsieh joined the faculty at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, jointly affiliated with the Children’s Hospital of Colorado. Dr. Hsieh’s lab addresses mechanistic and translational questions in human immunology using high-dimensional single-cell mass cytometry and ex-vivo cellular manipulation. Their goal is to enable a deeper understanding of normal immune function, and dysregulated immune processes in immunodeficiency, autoimmunity, and the overlap between the two.
Andrew Snow, PhD
Assistant Professor
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
Bethesda, MD
Dr. Snow earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2005, working with Dr. Olivia Martinez in the Transplant Immunology Laboratory. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Michael Lenardo at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD. In 2011, Dr. Snow moved across the street and joined the faculty at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Therapeutics. As a trained basic immunologist, Andy is primarily interested in the genetic and molecular control of immune homeostasis, with an emphasis on programmed cell death. His laboratory currently studies immune disorders (e.g. XLP-1, BENTA) characterized by defects in lymphocyte death and differentiation that result in abnormal lymphoproliferation and/or immunodeficiency.
Joud Hajjar
Assistant Professor
Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children's Hospital
Houston, TX
Dr. Hajjar her medical degree from the University of Aleppo in Syria. She received her residency training at the American University of Beirut and Indiana University School of Medicine. Dr. Hajjar completed a fellowship at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Hospice and Palliative care, and then completed her fellowship in Allergy and Immunology at Virginia commonwealth. And she is currently completing her MS degree in clinical investigation. Dr. Hajjar is American Board certified in Internal Medicine, Allergy and Immunology.
Dr. Hajjar is an assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine. She launched the transition program for adolescents and young adults with primary immunodeficiency at Texas Children's hospital. Her clinical interest include primary immunodeficiency disorders in adults, mast cell and eosinophil disorder. Dr. Hajjar's research is focused on clinical outcomes and quality of life in patients with primary immunodeficiency.
Kelli W. Williams, MD, MPH
Clinical Assistant Professor
Medical University of South Carolina
Charleston, SC
Dr. Williams received her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Colgate University in upstate New York. She earned her medical degree and Master of Public Health (in international health and development) from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2009. She completed her residency in Pediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston, South Carolina and her fellowship in Allergy and Immunology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. In 2015, she returned to Charleston and is now a Clinical Assistant Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina. Outside of work, she enjoys the outdoors with her husband, two boys, and chocolate Labrador retriever. She is also a foodie, travel enthusiast, and avid Red Sox fan.
David Hagin, MD, PhD
Fellow
University of Washington
Seattle, WA
Caroline Kuo, MD
Fellow
UCLA Medical Center
Los Angeles, CA
Lahari Rampur, MD
Fellow
Children's Hospital at Montefiore
Bronx, NY