People

Christine Hsieh, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology

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Dr. Christine Hsieh is a cellular neuroimmunologist focused on understanding mechanisms of inflammation that contribute to diseases with an urgent need for therapies, such as lupus, frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI). Her research has largely focused on the roles of innate immune receptors expressed by macrophages, microglia, B cells, and/or NK cells in disease, and how receptor activity can be modulated for therapy.

Mary Nakamura, MD

Professor of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology, In Residence

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Mary Nakamura received her B.A. from Swarthmore College, her M.D. from Yale and trained in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She completed her rheumatology training at Johns Hopkins and UCSF. She did her post doctoral work at UCSF under the mentorship of Bill Seaman. She is a basic-translational researcher focused on studies in the field of osteoimmunology. She formerly led the Rheumatoid Arthritis Clinic at UCSF Parnassus and is a clinical attending at the SF VA HCS.

Isabella Imhof

Senior Scientist

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Dr. Isabella Imhof graduated with a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Freibourg, Switzerland.  She trained as a postdoctoral fellow at UCSF in the lab of Dr. Ryk Derynk.  Dr. Imhof is an expert in cardioimmunology, cardiac injury, arthritis, traumatic brain injury, molecular biology, and flow cytometry. 

 

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Luyi Li

Lab Alumni- Research Associate, Surgeon

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Luyi Li is a general surgeon with over 20 years of research experience performing animal surgery.

Erene Niemi, BA

Lab Alumni- Research Specialist

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Erene Niemi is a senior research scientist with expertise in NK cells, osteoclasts, flow cytometry, cellular biology, and human and mouse immunology studies.  She graduated from the University of Stockholm, and is proud to have worked with Dr. Rolf Kiesling and Dr. William Seaman. 

Judy Shigenaga, BS

VA FACS Core Facilities Manager and Research Specialist

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Judy Shigenaga received her B.S. from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has extensive experience in endocrinology studies, next generation sequencing, biomarker studies, and flow cytometry.

 

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Kerri Somebang

Lab Alumni- Research Associate

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Kerri Somebang received her B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, San Diego.  She is an expert in traumatic brain injury, neurobehavior studies, brain surgery, in vivo mouse studies, cellular and molecular biology, and processing tissue samples for single-cell transcriptomics.