People

Dr. Amanda Collar completed her MD-PhD at the University of New Mexico. Under the mentorship of Dr. Kathryn Frietze, her research focused on understanding the natural antibody response toward Chlamydia trachomatis infection in women and leveraging this knowledge to engineer vaccines using a virus-like particle platform. Her work provided insight into novel chlamydia vaccine targets, new understanding of the role of antibodies in chlamydia infection, and together resulted in a co-inventor patent.

Dr. Gaballa grew up in the Bay Area and attended UCLA for undergrad, where he first developed a passion for research. After graduating, he spent three years at the Mayo Clinic investigating the role of CD4+ T cells in inflammatory bowel disease. He then completed medical school at the University of Colorado, studying the IL-1 family of cytokines and receptors in various inflammatory diseases. He is thrilled to return to UCLA and advance his career as a physician-scientist through the STAR-PSTP.

Dr. Le earned his BS from UC Santa Cruz, MS in Epidemiology & Clinical Research from Stanford, and MD from the University of Vermont. At Stanford, under Dr. Mindie Nguyen, he researched chronic liver disease epidemiology, leveraging national survey and registry data to characterize disease burden, identify high-risk populations, and evaluate predictors, providing insights to guide targeted screening, prevention, and early intervention.

Dr. Nash completed his MD and PhD at the University of Colorado, with mentors Dr. Jacob Friedman and Dr. Stephanie Wesolowski. His PhD thesis focused on identifying the role of maternal diet in dysregulating offspring hematopoiesis, inflammation and development of steatotic liver disease. This work highlighted the profound impact of maternal diet as a driver of disease in the next generation and helped define a novel field of developmental programming of the immune system by diet.

Mai earned her PhD at Cornell University.  Subsequently, she joined the VA Boston Massachusetts Veterans Epidemiology Research and Information Center and was an Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Her research focuses on the aging Veteran population, specifically studying cardiometabolic outcomes in the VA Million Veteran Program. She completed her MD at Carle Illinois College of Medicine.

Dr. Shaw received his BS in Biology and BA in Spanish from Emory University before moving to Boston to work in pathogen genomics at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. His work focused on advanced molecular diagnostics and the genomic epidemiology of pandemic viruses, particularly SARS-CoV-2. He completed his MD at UCLA, where his metagenomic analysis of the gut microbiome helped identify novel bacterial colonization factors of important gut symbionts.