Sarah Cobey
Principal Investigator • cobey@uchicago.eduSarah is a professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolution at the University of Chicago.
Marcos Vieira
Senior Research Scientist • mvieira@uchicago.eduMarcos studies the rapid evolution of B cells during the immune response and how this short-term evolution is enabled by the long-term evolution of immunoglobulin genes. He’s also interested in how immune history shapes the evolution and epidemiology of influenza and other antigenically diverse pathogens.
Lauren McGough
Research Scientist • mcgough@uchicago.eduLauren studies how the mechanisms and dynamics of affinity maturation in the adaptive immune system affect the diversity of individuals' antibody repertoires.
Manon Ragonnet
Research Scientist • manonragonnet@uchicago.eduManon studies the transmission and evolution of RNA viruses, through the analysis of their genetic data. Her previous work focused on elucidating HIV transmission dynamics in the UK and sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, she is integrating phylogenetic analysis into models forecasting the next flu and SARS-CoV-2 variants.
Christopher Joel Russo
PhD Student • cjrusso@uchicago.eduChristopher studies the germline adaptive evolution of the naive antibody repertoire and of the immunoglobulin alleles.
Alexander Pillai
PhD Student • anpillai@uchicago.eduAlex is interested in using computational models to study the dynamics of human immunity in response to infection and vaccination with the aim to improve longer-term model forecasts of infectious disease transmission.
Jessie Schmidt
Senior Analyst - Grants Administration • schmidtja@uchicago.eduJessie helps further the team's research capabilities by managing internal and external research funds, projects and collaborative initiatives. Her finance, grant and project management experience combined with a journalism background contributes a reduced administrative burden to the team, so they can remain focused on their invaluable scientific inquiries and interests.
Alex Byrnes
Bioinformatician • abyrnes@uchicago.eduAlex furthers the lab's reproducibility and reusability initiatives, and serves as digital lead. He has worked on national-level transparency and data projects since 2013 and software since the early aughts.
Mennatallah Gouda
Research Analyst • vsr9798@uchicago.eduMenna works on modeling the factors affecting vaccine immunogenicity, including viral evolution and repeat vaccination, leading to a better understanding of the variability in vaccine responsiveness.