Tracie DeVries-Seimon
tad2105@columbia.edu

Tracie is currently working as a postdoctoral research investigator in the Tabas laboratory studying the link
between the initiation of the Unfolded Protein Response (UPR) mediated by free cholesterol loading in macrophages ultimately resulting in the induction of apoptosis. Her studies focus on dissecting out signaling pathways which are activated during the UPR, and deciphering whether these pathways play a role in the induction of the mitochondrial dependent apoptotic pathway. In 1997 she received her B.A. in biology from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs campus. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in May of 2003 for her contributions in identifying a nuclear role for PKCdelta during induction of apoptosis by DNA damaging agents.

Cecilia Devlin
ceciliadevlin@yahoo.com

Cecilia is an Associate Research Scientist who comes from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. She obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia in 1986. In 1994 she attained her Ph.D. in molecular biology from University of Queensland. During that same year she came to the U.S.A. where she worked at the University of Maryland. In Dr. Tabas' lab her research focuses on the role of the different forms of acid sphingomyelinase in atherosclerosis and apoptosis.

Bernhard Dorweiler
bd2253@columbia.edu

Bernhard is a visiting research scientist from the University of Mainz, Germany and joined the lab in February 2008. After graduating from Johannes Gutenberg-Medical School in Mainz in 1997, he completed a residence in surgery and a fellowship in vascular surgery and held the position of a consultant vascular surgeon at the department of cardiothoracic & vascular surgery at the university hospital in Mainz. His research interests included various aspects of clinical vascular surgery and he received a Ph.D. for his work on an in vitro-model for the simulation of atherosclerotic plaque development. Beeing interested in signaling mechanisms of cholesterol-induced macrophage apoptosis he now studies adipokines as modulators of UPR-mediated macrophage apoptosis.

George Kuriakose
gk41@columbia.edu

George is from Kerala, India. He received his B.Sc. in Biology from Kerala University and M.Sc. in Biology from Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala. He came to U.S.A. in 1992 and started working in the Department of Ophthalmology, Columbia University as a Research Staff Associate. In 1997 he moved to the Tabas Lab as a Senior Research Worker. His primary responsibilities include (a) maintaining and breeding various transgenic and knockout mouse lines; (b) sectioning of OCT embedded and paraffin mouse tissue samples; (c) histological staining and immunohistochemical analysis; (d) quantitation and qualitative analysis of atherosclerotic lesions in aortic arch with computer-aided imaging systems; (e) isolating primary human and murine cells, and maintaining a wide variety of immortal cell lines; (f) PCR, Southern and Western analysis; (g) standard molecular biology techniques; (h) bone marrow transplantation in mouse; (i) extracting and purifying human, rabbit and mouse plasma lipoprotein (VLDL, LDL and HDL) by preparative ultra centrifugation; (j) isotopic labeling (14C, 3H, 125I) of various cholesterol and protein components of lipoproteins for studying lipoprotein trafficking via endocytic and selective uptake pathways; (k) TLC and FPLC; and (l) Protein purification by column chromatography.

Gang received his BS and MS in Molecular Biology from Nankai University, China in 1999 and Ph.D in Pathology from Wayne State University School of Medicine, MI. His Ph.D research focused on molecular analysis of human PPAR gamma mutations associated with diabetes and lipodystrophy. He joined Dr. Tabas’ lab in January, 2007 and his research is focusing on the identification of novel lipoprotein/cholesterol trafficking pathway in macrophage leading to atherosclerosis.

Xianghai Liao
xl2197@columbia.edu

Xianghai received his B.S. and M.S. in biochemistry and molecular biology from East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai, China and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. After three years postdoctoral research working on the developmental biology of cardiovascular system in zebrafish and medaka fish, Xianghai came to the Tabas lab as a research scientist to conduct diverse experiments in areas of cellular, molecular, lipoprotein biology and histology.

Jorge Magallon
jcm2168@columbia.edu

Jorge Magallon received his bachelors degree in Biochemistry/ Cell Biology at UCSD. During this time he spent several years studying limb development at a gene expression lab at the Salk Institute.  He then attended the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and received his M.D. degree in 2003.  Thereafter, he pursued residency training in Internal Medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and in July 2007 started his cardiology fellowship training at Columbia.  His general interests are in atherosclerosis and diabetes.  He joined the Tabas lab in July and is working with Dr. Tracie Seimon in elucidating how pattern recognition receptors and toll-like receptors interact to play a role in macrophage apoptosis. 

Jorge Magallon

Dorien Schrijvers
dms2188@columbia.edu

Dorien obtained her University Degree in Biomedical Sciences in 1999 from the University of Antwerp, Belgium. After working for 2 years at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp (Belgium) on malaria-related topics, she joined the Division of Pharmacology at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) where she received her PhD in January of 2007.  The focus of her research was on cell death and efficiency of efferocytosis in human and animal atherosclerosis.  She joined the laboratory of Dr. Tabas in October 2007 with a broad interest in molecular mechanisms involved in atherosclerosis and insulin resistance.  Her postdoctoral fellowship project will focus on the impact and mechanisms of smooth muscle cell death in atherosclerotic plaques and possible benefits of modulating the Unfolded Protein Response on plaque development.

Edward Thorp
ebt2103@columbia.edu

Ed Thorp will begin as a postdoctoral research scientist in the lab of Dr. Ira Tabas in 2005. Ed received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Delaware. Afterwards, he spent a year assessing the coagulation status and cellular morphologies of patient blood samples in a clinical hematology lab. Subsequently, he began graduate studies in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Loyola University Chicago. His dissertation focused on the molecular aspects of virus-cell interactions, particularly during entry of viruses into cells. Ed's basic interests include the elucidation of mechanisms behind basic biological processes.

Jenelle Timmins
jt2354@columbia.edu

Jenelle Timmins received her B.S. in biology from East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania in 2000 and in 2006 and her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Pathobiology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. While at Wake Forest, she developed a novel animal model to study tissue specific functions of the ABCA1 transporter. Jenelle came to the Tabas lab with general interests in molecular and cellular mechanisms of atherosclerosis, as a complement to in-vivo models studied during her dissertation research. Jenelle's specific interests in the Tabas laboratory include the role of calcium in ER stress-induced apoptosis in macrophages, as well as the link between calcium and the activation of pro-apoptotic STAT1.