Amanda grew up in Illinois. She traveled north to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for her undergraduate degree, where she found her passion for research and gained an interest in cancer immunology. Outside of the lab, she is usually baking (and eating) pastries or hanging out with her two cats, Poppy and Fig.

Jufang did her PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, focused on protein structural biology. She went on to do a post-doc at Harvard investigating how axonal receptor structure influenced neuron development, as well as a post-doc here at Wash U investigating structural mechanisms of axonal degeneration. After some time back home in Taiwan she returned to St. Louis and joined our lab in 2020. She brings significant expertise in protein structural biology, engineering and purification to our work on synthetic receptors.

Shelly grew up in Taiwan and cut her scientific teeth as a research technician working on T cell activation. She went on to do her PhD at the prestigious Academia Sinica, focusing on development of therapeutic antibodies. During this time, she spent a summer as a visiting fellow at a CAR T cell lab in Germany, which led her to our lab in St. Louis. Her work focuses on T cell memory differentiation and engineering approaches to tune T cell lineages. Like many others in the lab, Shelly loves to cook!

Deepesh grew up in North India. After completing his masters from IIT Roorkee (India), he moved to Uppsala University in Sweden to complete his PhD. His PhD work focused on adhesion dependent mechanisms regulating cell, gaining expertise in cell biology and imaging. He moved to Wash U in 2021 as a postdoc in pediatrics where he developed advanced skills in transcriptomic analysis of clinical samples. In our lab he uses high resolution imaging and innovative biochemistry to understand how CARs interact with other T cell proteins. Outside of the lab, he loves to cook new (ish) vegetarian food - which typically happens due to missing ingredients!

Nathan grew up in Pittsburgh and went to Haverford College outside Philadelphia where he studied Spanish Literature and Biology. After college, Nathan started his life-long journey in cellular therapy as a tech in Carl June’s lab, and then stayed at Penn for medical school, residency, fellowship in hematology/oncology, and a post-doc back in the June Lab. When he’s not annoying his lab, he’s annoying his wife Abby, a physician-scientist in pediatric oncology, and his kids Max and Alana. Outside of work, you can usually find him in the kitchen cooking or eating.

Yangdon grew up in northern India and completed her undergraduate degree Macalester College in Minnesota. It was there that she developed an interest in immunology, and enrolled in the Wash U PhD program in 2022. Her interests lie in understanding how T cells interact with innate immune cells and using engineered T cells as mini bioreactors to influence the function of immune cells in tumor microenvironments. In her free time she enjoys running, attempting to cook, or playfully annoying her cat, Shilo.

John grew up just outside of Philadelphia. After graduating from the University of South Carolina with a degree in biomedical engineering, he spent two years developing peptide-centric CAR T cells at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In 2021, he matriculated to WashU and has been frequenting the Arch ever since! He is working to design better CAR signaling domains through wet lab data generation, design of synthetic proteins and machine learning. Outside the lab, he enjoys suffering through Gamecock and Philadelphia sports seasons, working out, and playing guitar.