Spotlight

Dr. Bohannon completed her PhD at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, TX, where she began her studies into immune function following severe burn injury. After completing her PhD studies in 2011, she joined the Sherwood Lab at UTMB as a postdoctoral fellow. Shortly thereafter, she assisted Dr. Sherwood in relocating his laboratory to the Anesthesiology department at VUMC in 2012, where she completed her postdoctoral training. She joined Anesthesiology faculty in 2015 and now has her own research program aimed at investigating immunomodulatory therapies for the prevention of infection and sepsis in patients with severe burn and other critical injuries... Click Dr. Bohannon's photo to continue reading.

Logan is from Hoffman, North Carolina. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. At Morehouse College, Logan conducted research in the laboratory of Dr. Juana Mendenhall where he developed therapeutic hydrogels to regenerate degraded cartilage. At Vanderbilt, he is in the Cancer Biology Graduate Program, and his project focuses on creating synthetic microenvironments to better understand tumor cell behavior... Click the image on the left to continue reading.

Mona Mashayekhi, M.D., Ph.D. received her B.A. in Biology from University of Chicago. Mona did her Ph.D. and M.D. at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri. She is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the labs of John Koethe and Spyros Kalams. She is also a Clinical Instructor of medicine here at VUMC in the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolism.... Click the image on the left to continue reading.

Dr. Wilson received his B.S. in Bioengineering from the Oregon State University Honors College, where he also trained in a number of academic and industrial research labs, including the Oregon Medical Laser Center and Bayer Pharmaceuticals. He went on to pursue his doctoral studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the Department of Surgery at Emory University and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech. He is now running his own lab as an Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University.... Click Dr. Wilson's photo to continue reading.

Members of the Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation are working together to make extraordinary advances in health and medicine. VI4 is supporting efforts to improve testing, develop therapies, and create vaccines against COVID-19. At the frontline of this battle is the laboratory of Dr. Jonathan Schmitz, the Medical Director of the VUMC Molecular Infectious Diseases Laboratory, or “MIDL" .... Click the image on the left to continue reading.

Brent Ferrell received his M.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He joined the Irish lab in 2012 as a Fellow in Vanderbilt’s Tinsley R. Harrison Society physician-scientist training program and became Instructor of Medicine in 2015. In 2017, Brent received NIH/NHLBI K23 HL138291, was promoted, and started his own lab as Assistant Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center..... Click Dr. Ferrell's photo to continue reading.

Todd Bartkowiak, Ph.D. received his B.S. in Biology from Sam Houston State University and his M.S. in Biomedical Science / Immunology from MD Anderson UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Science. Todd did his Ph.D. research with Michael Curran, Ph.D. and James Allison, Ph.D., at MD Anderson. He joined the Jonathan Irish and Rebecca Ihrie labs as a Postdoctoral Scholar in 2018 to study brain tumor immunology... Click the image on the left to continue reading.

Benem-Orom Davids is a graduate student at Meharry Medical College. He graduated from Morehouse College in 2011 with his B.S. in Biology, Bioinformatics, and Public Health. He joined the Dash Lab in 2014, where they study the mechanism of HIV-1 replication and pathogenesis... Click the image on the left to continue reading.

Ivelin Georgiev received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Duke University. In 2009, he joined the newly formed Structural Bioinformatics Core Section at the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) on the main NIH campus in Bethesda, MD, where he served as a staff scientist and co-head until 2015. Dr. Georgiev is an Associate Director for the Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation. He is also a faculty member at the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center and an Assistant Professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology and of Computer Science at Vanderbilt.... Click Dr. Georgiev's photo to continue reading.

Laura Hesse is from southern Indiana and graduated from Michigan State University in 2017 with her B.S. in Microbiology. She joined the Skaar Lab the following year, where she studies nutrient metal homeostasis in Acinetobacter baumannii... Click the image on the left to continue reading.