Robert Manguso PhD (Principal Investigator) is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School and an Associate Member at the Broad Institute. He completed his undergraduate degree at Wheaton College in Norton, MA, and his PhD at Harvard Medical school/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Nick Haining's lab. His work focuses on using functional genomics to improve our understanding of cancer immunology and the treatment of cancer with immunotherapies. When not using “immunology” to neatly explain conflicting data, he may be found hiking, backcountry skiing, proselytizing hikers and skiers to become backcountry skiers, hanging out with his dogs, and consuming dangerous quantities of ramen.
Kathleen Yates (co-Director) is the co-leader for TIDE and master of RNA-seq; without her, the lab would be funding-free, an organizational nightmare, and constantly embroiled in pointless bickering. Fueled primarily by coffee and baked goods, she spends her evenings and weekends shuffling her adorable children toward their hopes and dreams, contracting various illnesses and injuries in exotic locations, and generally being a model citizen.
Hakimeh Ebrahimi-Nik (Research Scientist) is a veterinarian (only for show) and cancer immunologist. She has been involved in cancer immunology and immunotherapy since 2015 as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Connecticut, Medical School and Carole and Ray Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center. Outside the lab she enjoys poetry, painting and going around the world!
Hsiao-Wei Tsao (Research Scientist) was born and raised in Taiwan, completed his postdoctoral work in the Haining lab at Dana-Farber, and now leads the TIDE hit advancement team. He has been dedicated to studying T cell biology since 2004 and considers the whale shark his spirit animal. Known for his “golden hands,” Hsiao-Wei is a stone-cold professional scientist.
Cong Fu (Postdoctoral Fellow) is pursuing her post-doc at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in the Uppaluri Lab as well as working in collaboration with the Manguso Lab. Her previous research includes studying hematopoiesis and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) utilizing zebrafish animal model. She is now focusing on cancer immunology and immunotherapy. The proudest thing in her whole life is she ever completed a Full Marathon (long time ago....). Outside the lab she enjoys reading, looking at bridges and Chinese style potato chips.
Jooho Chung (Postdoctoral Fellow) is an adult medical oncology fellow at Dana Farber Cancer Institute/Massachusetts General Brigham. He is training to be a physician-scientist in the field of bone marrow transplantation/cellular therapy. He completed his PhD at the University of Michigan with Ivan Maillard, studying the role of Notch signaling in alloimmunity. He enjoys watching football and playing tennis.
Nelson Knudsen (Research Scientist) completed his PhD at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Chih-Hao Lee’s Lab studying immunometabolism in obesity and exercise physiology. He enjoys running on roads and trails, cycling, and skiing with his dog.
Payal Tiwari (Postdoctoral Fellow) is pursuing her post-doc at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in the Hahn Lab as well as working in collaboration with the Manguso Lab. Payal completed her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago and then ventured over to Boston to continue her work in cancer research. Payal enjoys cooking excellent Indian dishes, the extremely cold Boston weather, and getting lost on hikes without cell service.
Cun Lan Chuong (in vivo Specialist) assists with the many mouse experiments that TIDE conducts at the Broad. Outside of work, Lan enjoys watching NFL football. One day, she’d love to purchase an RV mobile home for travel with family and friends.
Collins Cheruiyot (Graduate Student) was a research associate the TIDE team after graduating from Brown University and worked on the mechanisms driving tumor immunotherapy sensitivity to ADAR deletion. Collins is now enrolled in the Immunology PhD program at Harvard Medical School, and studies lipid metabolism and autophagy in anti-tumor immunity.
Seth Anderson (Research Associate) is a Pittsburgh native and recent graduate of Yale University, where he studied Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. At Yale, he investigated the role of ncRNAs in lung cancer as a member of the Takyar lab. Now at TIDE, Seth works with the Target Validation team to probe screen hits and discover their mechanisms of action. Outside of lab, he enjoys running, hiking, amateur astronomy, and beekeeping.
Omar Avila Monge (Research Associate) is originally from Luquillo, Puerto Rico. He completed his BS with double concentrations in Cellular Neuroscience and Psychology at Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University. Outside of lab, you can often find him running, cycling, playing or watching basketball, and attempting to sharpen his guitar skills.
Andi Cheng (Research Associate) was born and raised outside of Boston and, after graduating from Swarthmore College with majors in Biology and Computer Science, is excited to return. Fueled by ever-increasing amounts of coffee (it only happened in the last year and is Definitely Not An Addiction), he looks forward to late nights spent in the company of pipettes. When he is not in lab, Andi can be found drawing, reading, baking excessive amounts of pies, or most likely, sleeping
Sarah Kim (Computational Biology Associate) majored in Computational Biology and was excited to find a position that had both of those words in the title! She enjoys taking the T in the wrong direction and endorsing Julia as the optimal programming language.
Jonathan Lopez-Benitez (Project Coordinator) graduated from Boston University with a degree in neuroscience and medical anthropology. Leaving the days of Alzheimer’s research behind, Jonathan is a project coordinator for our group. Outside of the office you can find him reading, cooking day-long dishes, or trying to figure out how to garden in a Boston apartment.
Audrey Muscato (Research Associate) graduated from Bowdoin College with a degree in neuroscience. While at Bowdoin, she worked in the Dickinson lab studying neuromodulation of the lobster cardiac system. Outside of the lab, Audrey can be found watching sports, browsing bookstores, and admiring cute dogs she passes on the sidewalk.
Ashwin Kammula (Computational Associate) is a recent graduate from the University of Maryland, College Park, where he majored in Computer Science and earned a concentration in Biology. Ashwin is very excited to join the Manguso Lab, and looks forward to putting his coding skills to good use. When he’s not sitting at the computer, he enjoys being overly competitive in pick-up basketball, tennis, and fantasy football.
Kayla Colvin (Research Associate) was born and raised in Chicago (which she refers to as the greatest city in the world). She graduated from Reed College with a BA in neuroscience where she researched appetitive motivation and drug reward. Outside of research she loves going to concerts, baking, and not camping in the woods.
Rachel Fetterman (Research Associate) is a recent graduate from the University of California, Berkeley where she studied Molecular and Cellular Biology. While at Berkeley, she studied the antibiotic resistance of Mycobacterium abscessus. Outside of the lab, Rachel works as a clinical assistant at Boston Children's Hospital and hangs out with her partner and internet superstar cat, Papaya.
Jonathan Perera (Computational Associate), originally born in the tropics of Sri Lanka and now a “Florida man”, recently graduated from Duke University with a BSE in Biomedical Engineering. When he’s not cracking open his turbo-charged laptop to investigate the mysterious emperor of all maladies, he’s cracking open a crisp thriller from Barnes and Nobles to dive into, tea in hand. As a Renaissance-man-in-training, he is hopelessly in love with endlessly learning new things and exploring new places. He also enjoys singing in the shower and road-tripping, and is (naively) excited for the snow!
Celeste Nobrega (Computational Associate) recently graduated from Wheaton College (MA) with a degree in Bioinformatics. During their time at Wheaton, they completed an Honors Thesis project studying the long term impacts of chronic early life stress on the ability of the zebrafish to regenerate their caudal fin by integrating bulk genomic data with single cell data in a novel analysis. Outside of computational research, you can find Celeste volunteering on weekends or talking about her love of the outdoors and animals — specifically cats, dogs, and horses.
Hans Pope (Research Scientist) is returning to TIDE and the Griffin Lab after 3 years of working at Arsenal Biosciences in South San Francisco developing CAR-T cell therapies. Previously an original member of TIDE, he is both amazed and grateful to have been welcomed back. When away from the bench, he almost certainly skiing, listening to audio books in traffic, or trying to tire out his German shepherd.
Jordan Chinai (Postdoctoral Fellow) is an adult medical oncology fellow in the Dana-Farber/Mass General Brigham program. He completed his MD/PhD at Einstein in New York and did research related to novel checkpoint inhibitors in tumor immunotherapy. His current clinical and research interests surround discovery of targets to enable and enhance responses to immunotherapy in GI malignancies. Outside of work, he enjoys exploring New England and traveling the world trying to meet all of the weird and amazing animals that are out there.
Aiping Jiang (Postdoctoral Fellow) is utilizing in vivo CRISPR screen platform at TIDE to discover new cancer immunotherapy targets and resistance mechanisms. Before joining TIDE, she worked as a postdoc at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston in Dr. Timothy Springer’s lab and received a Ph.D from Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. In the spare time, she loves playing badminton, jogging along Charles River/ponds, exploring museums.
Erin Kistler (Research Associate) is originally from southern California and recently graduated from Denison University with a degree in Biology. At Denison, Erin studied phage-antibiotic synergy as a treatment method for Burkholderia cenocepacia infections. Outside of lab, Erin enjoys reading, running, and watching soccer.
Mitra Pezeshki (Research Associate) is a California native and a recent grad of Scripps College in Claremont. She spent a year abroad at the University of Copenhagen in a molecular pharmacology lab studying orphan GPCRs, and also worked for a startup aiming to deploy fungi for carbon sequestration. She loves skiing, yoga, cooking and cats.
Sarah Noel (Research Associate) recently graduated from Penn State University with a degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. While at Penn State she studied a novel therapeutic for leukemia as well as the epithelial to mesenchymal transition in breast cancer. When she's not in the lab she enjoys trying new coffee shops and walking other people's dogs.
Alex Rojas (Research Associate) is originally from Long Island, New York and a recent graduate from Emory University. At Emory he worked on developing an mRNA delivery system using extracellular vesicles. Outside of the lab Alex enjoys playing volleyball, getting beat up in muay thai, gaming and desperately trying to learn how to cook gourmet dishes.