In the News

April 2021	Dr. Alistair McGregor awarded a new five year NIH (NIAID) R01 Grant totaling $2.3 Million (direct) to further his lab’s ongoing research into congenital cytomegalovirus.
Feb 16, 2021	Dr. Samuel elected into the American Academy of Microbiology
Feb 2020	Jeff Cirillo elected into the American Academy of Microbiology Jeff Cirillo named American Academy of Microbiology Fellow
Jan 2018	Dr. Laura West selected as Leadership Education and Development (LEAD) Fellow
Oct 2018	Dr. Helene Andrews-Polymenis named 2018 Presidential Impact Fellow
Nov 2018	Dr. Jeff Cirillo selected as AAAS fellow
Oct 2017	Dr. Zhilei Chen receives the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award

May 2021	Yuanjiu “Abby” Lei, MS, a 5^th year PhD student in the West lab is the first author on a paper published in Science Advances.
April 2021	Sylvia Torres Odio, MS, a 3^rd year PhD studen t in the West lab, is the first author on a paper published in The Journal of Immunology
June 2020	Dr. Samuel leads team testing COVID-19 Vaccine Candidates
June 2020	Dr. Jeff Cirillo leading a trial of TB and Polio vaccines against COVID-19
June 2020	Drs. Paul deFigueiredo and Arum Han receive a National Science Foundation grant to pursue the 'lab-on-a-chip' technology to rapidly identify antibodies for therapeutics to fight COVID-19.
April 2020	Dr. Jeff Cirillo awarded 2.5 million to fast-track COVID-19 Treatment
April 2019	Drs. Samuel, deFigueiredo and van Schaik awarded 14.2 million grant from DARPA
Sept 2018	Dr. Helene Andrews-Polymenis explores the undiscovered mechanics of Salmonella Infection
April 2018	Dr. Phillip West and Dr. Laura West work together to unlock the potential of Mitochondria
Aug 2018	Drs. Jon Skare, Magnus Hook and Sara Lawhon team up to investigate how Staphylococcus pseudintermedius causes infection
Feb 2018	Drs. Robert Alaniz and Arul Jayaraman explore the frontiers of medical engineering innovation
Dec 2017	Dr. Carolyn Cannon is engineering a better drug delivery system

Oct 2020

Haley Scott, Medical Sciences Ph.D. student, received a notice of award for an F31 NRSA Individual Predoctoral Fellowship from the NIH. Haley is a student in Drs. Kristin Patrick and Robbie Watson’s labs in the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis and Immunology. Congratulations, Haley!
Yuanjiu “Abby” Lei, MS, a 5^th year PhD student in the West lab, received an American Heart Association Pre-Doctoral Fellowship. The award will support her research to define how mitochondrial dysfunction and innate immunity contribute to chemotherapy-related heart dysfunction. Congrats Abby!
Alexandra Powell , a 3^rd year Ph.D. student in the Skare lab, was awarded 2^nd place at the Texas A&M 2021 IBT GSO Symposium for her talk entitled “Classical Pathway Inhibition as an Immune Evasion and Survival Technique in Borrelia Species”. Congratulations Alex!