Meet The Speakers

Dr. Kirabo is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology, Department of Medicine with a joint appointment in the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics and adjunct faculty positions at Meharry Medical College and at the University of Mulungushi, Zambia. Research in her laboratory focuses on understanding the host-microbiota-immune interactions in lipid oxidation, immune metabolism and cardio-renal disease. She has published over 110 pear reviewed manuscript in journals such as Circulation, Circulation Research, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Hypertension, American Journal of Physiology, JCI Insight Cell and Cell Reports. Her standing in the field is evidenced by permanent NIH study section membership, and numerous ad hoc NIH study section assignments as well as peer nominated national/international awards including the AHA Harry Goldblatt Award.

Dr. Louise McCullough is the Roy M. and Phyllis Gough Huffington Distinguished Chair and Professor
of Neurology at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth. She is a physician-scientist and a practicing
vascular neurologist with clinical expertise in sex/gender disparities, the microbiome, stroke and
aging, and acute stroke treatments. A renowned investigator, she is well recognized for her work in
cerebral vascular disease and is known for her research identifying sex differences in cell death
pathways during stroke, which have now been shown to be a major factor in the response to ischemic
insult. Working closely with the Society for Women's Health Research (SWHR) and the Office of
Research on Women’s Health (ORWH), she was instrumental in the National Institute of Health’s
requirement to include female animals in basic and translational studies. Among Dr. McCullough’s
many honors and awards are the prestigious National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
(NINDS) Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award, the NINDS Landis Award for Outstanding
Mentorship, the Inaugural American Heart Association (AHA) Outstanding Stroke Research Mentor Award and the AHA Merit Award.

Dr. Kaltschmidt is a Faculty Scholar at the Stanford Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute and an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford School of Medicine. Originally from Germany, Dr. Kaltschmidt trained as a developmental biologist at the University of Cambridge in the UK, where she studied the cellular mechanisms underlying early Drosophila nervous system development. During her postdoc at Columbia University, she began working with mouse as a model system, and studied mechanisms that underlie sensory-motor circuit connectivity in the spinal cord. Dr. Kaltschmidt continued to explore the development and regulation of spinal circuity in her laboratory at the Sloan Kettering Institute in New York City. Since moving to Stanford, the focus of her research has expanded to include neuronal circuits that underlie gut motility, the so called “second brain"

Dr. Phillip Popovich has spent his entire professional career at The Ohio State University. There, he completed his PhD training in physiology and spinal cord injury (SCI) then, as a post-doctoral fellow, he was awarded a competitive Sandoz Research Fellowship to support his formal training in immunology and CNS autoimmune disease. After starting his laboratory, Dr. Popovich has been making seminal contributions to the field of neuroscience and is internationally renowned for doing innovative and rigorous research, especially in the sub-disciplines of neurotrauma and neuroimmunology. Presently, he and his team are focused on understanding how SCI-induced dysautonomia contributes to gut dysbiosis and altered immune homeostasis after SCI. This unique research pursuit emphasizes body “systems” and seeks to treat SCI not as a problem of paralysis but as a disease that affects the entire body.

Research in the Chapkin lab focuses on dietary/microbial modulators related to the prevention of cancer and chronic inflammatory diseases. Our central goal is to (1) understand cancer chemoprevention at a fundamental level, and (2) to test pharmaceutical agents in combination with dietary/microbial (countermeasures to the Western diet) to more effectively improve gut health and reduce systemic chronic inflammation. Since diet influences gut microbiota composition and metabolite production, to unravel the interrelationships among gut health and the structure of the gut microbial ecosystem, we are in the process of evaluating (using transgenic mouse, Drosophila models and humans) how the gut microbiome modulates intestinal cells, innate immune cells and tumors. As part of this endeavor, we are modeling at the single cell molecular level the dynamic relationship between diet and gut microbe-derived metabolites which modulate chronic inflammation and the hierarchical cellular organization of the intestine, e.g., stem cell niche.

Dr. Corinne Benakis earned a Biochemistry degree from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and completed her PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Lausanne in 2011. During her postdoctoral fellowship at Weill Cornell Medical College from 2012 to 2016, funded by the Swiss National Research Foundation, she made pivotal discoveries regarding the link between the gut microbiota, intestinal immune cells, and stroke (Benakis et al., Nat. Med. 2016). Upon joining the Institute for Stroke and Dementia Research (ISD) in Munich, she founded her research group in 2020, receiving support from the German Research Foundation and European grants. Dr. Benakis' lab primarily focuses on unraveling the intricate, two-way relationship between the gut microbiome and brain during stroke. Her team endeavors to elucidate how microbiota-derived metabolites influence immune cell polarization in the gut and their trafficking to the brain. Their ultimate goal is to pioneer innovative therapeutic strategies for stroke recovery by targeting the gut microbiota.

 Dr. Yuxiang Sun is Professor and Associate Head for Graduate Programs, Department of Nutrition, Texas A& M University (TAMU). Dr. Sun’s work is focused on gut hormone ghrelin; she generated a series of crucial ghrelin mouse tools and discovered the novel functions of ghrelin signaling in nutritional regulation, diabetes, thermogenesis, and inflammation. Her work establishes that ghrelin is an important nutrient-sensor, metabolic regulator, and immuno-modulator, which have important implications for obesity, diabetes, aging and neurodegenerative diseases.

The Mangalam Lab is dedicated to unraveling the complex interactions between the microbiome and the human host, particularly in the context of diet, immune function, autoimmunity, and cancer. We use a multidisciplinary approach that combines cutting-edge immunological techniques, pre-clinical disease models, high-throughput sequencing, computational analyses, and clinical investigations to understand how the microbiome influences our overall well-being. A better understanding of the same will help harness the enormous potential of microbiome as future diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic agents. 

Mary Kimmel, MD, PhD is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Medical Director of NC Maternal Mental Health MATTERS and specializes in providing psychiatric care to pregnant and postpartum people.  Her research focuses on improving the characterization of mental health and in identifying biomarkers to better understand the role of the microbiome, immune system, and stress on the current and future mental health of the parent-child dyad. 

Dr. Alexandra Byrne is an Assistant Professor at UMass Chan Medical School, where her lab is focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms that regulate an adult neuron’s ability to regain function after injury and to protect itself from neurodegenerative disease. Dr. Byrne received her PhD in Molecular and Medical Genetics from the University of Toronto and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Genetics and the Program for Cellular Neuroscience, Neurodegeneration and Repair at Yale University. The Byrne lab is investigating how damaged axons avoid degeneration, how they initiate regeneration and how they then form functional synapses. An emerging area of focus in the Byrne lab is identifying specific strains of bacteria that regulate neurodegeneration and axonal repair, and then dissecting the nervous system’s molecular response to the identified bacterial diets. Together, their work adds significantly to our understanding of the intrinsic mechanisms that regulate a neuron’s response to injury and disease.

Dr. Villapol´s research interests have been mainly focused on elucidating the mechanisms of neurodegeneration, neuroinflammation or neurogenesis via several models of brain injury (traumatic brain injury or cerebral ischemia), and neurodegeneration as Alzheimer's disease. They are investigating the brain-gut axis or drug delivery using nanoparticles for neurorestoration in a gender-dependent manner. 

Villapol's lab focus is the pursuit of novel neurorestorative treatments for debilitating brain injuries to open the door to alternative therapies that repair and recover the damaged brain through the periphery.​

Dr. Rachel Pilla is currently a Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, Texas A&M University. Her main research interest is host-microbe interactions and their role in disease. Her current research at the Gastrointestinal Laboratory focuses on the characterization of intestinal microbiota and its metabolites in animal models, and the development of novel microbiome-modifying interventions.

Dr. Walter Cromer is an Assistant Professor in the department of Medical Physiology at Texas A&M. In his career he has worked on aspects of the gastrointestinal tract ranging from angiogenesis in inflammation, lymphatic functional changes after radiation and most recently changes in the gut immune competency and microbiome in space flight. As part of the latter project he has found that there are distinct and transferable changes to the metabolome made by space flight that could alter the gut-brain axis. Has had funding from NASA, CASIS, and the NSBRI (precursor to TRISH) to look at alterations of the GI tract due to simulated space radiation, simulated microgravity, and actual space flight.

Jessica Galloway-Peña is an assistant professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Texas A&M University and a faculty member of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Genetics and Genomics. She additionally holds an adjunct position in Genomic Medicine at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Her research focuses on the mechanisms by which the microbiome contributes to cancer-treatment response, toxicities, and infection by antimicrobial-resistant microorganisms among immunocompromised individuals. Translational applications of her research include determining microbial (bacterial, fungal and viral), genetic, and metabolic biomarkers for cancer treatment outcomes. Through her research, she hopes to promote antimicrobial stewardship and microbial-conscious therapeutics.

Dr. Juneyoung Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. His laboratory of neuro-mucosal immunology is studying (1) neuro-immune interactions, (2) host-microbe interactions, (3) inter-organ communication and (4) host metabolism in age-related neurological diseases and psychosocial stress.

Dr. Tükel’s research is focused on the role of amyloids during infections. Amyloids are protein deposits with a fibrillar cross beta-sheet quaternary structure, which exhibit a starch (amylose)-like ability to stain with iodine. In humans, deposition of various amyloid proteins is associated with a number of illnesses, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson's disease, prion diseases, and type-2 diabetes. Interestingly, many bacteria produce functional amyloid deposits, which are an important component of their extracellular biofilm matrix. Curli amyloid fibrils, produced by enteric bacteria such as Salmonella enterica serotype Typhimurium and E. coli, are the best-characterized bacterial amyloid fibrils to date. Amyloids of both host and bacterial origin share a number of characteristics, including an ability to trigger innate immune responses. Recently, the Tükel lab discovered that responses to host amyloids and curli amyloid fibrils are mediated through Toll-like receptor (TLR) 2.

Neurogastroenterology research is my passion. Specifically, my research in Prof. Sohrabji's lab focuses on the role of intestinal epithelial stem cells, gut blood barrier permeability, gut microbiome and gut metabolites after stroke and their impact on long-term consequences, such as post stroke depression and dementia. In addition, my research aim is to develop novel stroke therapies for stroke by repairing the Gut, and supports the concept that "Breaking/repairing the gut is the key to making the brain healthy."

Dr. Raghavan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and a Scholar in the Regional Excellence Center for Cancer at Texas A&M University. She has a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Wake Forest University/Virginia Tech and was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan. At Texas A&M, the Raghavan lab engineers tumor microenvironments to study how stem cells and immunity intersect in cancer and regenerative medicine. Her approaches integrate mechanobiology, biomaterials and microenvironment engineering to ask questions that intersect the cancer stem cell/immune axis. Her work is funded by the NIH/NCI through an R37 MERIT award, the Department of Defense, and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. Her originality in research was recently recognized by the Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society.

She is also an award-winning teacher, recognized for her inclusive pedagogy in the undergraduate classroom by a Montague Scholars Award from Texas A&M University.  Dr. Raghavan is an advocate for accessibility and equity, working actively towards dismantling systemic processes that hold academics behind in STEM.