Utz Lab Members
Click here for emeritus members.
Utz Lab Members. Back row (L to R): Rohit Gupta, Mike Wong, Jordan Price, PJ Utz, Chih Long Liu, Mel Balboni, Wedge Cheung. Front row (L to R): Cindy Limb, Sarah Kongpachith, Jessica Ye, Gloria Yiu, Robin Castel Navarro, Jamie Haddon, Justin Jarrell, Stephanie Tangsombatvisit, Jake Rosenberg
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Paul J. Utz, M.D.
joined the Stanford faculty in 1999 and was promoted to Associate Professor of Medicine in 2005. P.J. was born and raised in the Pocono Mountains near Scranton, PA. In 1986, he earned his Bachelor's Degree in Biology from King's College in Wilkes-Barre, PA, with minors in English and Chemistry. While earning his M.D. degree in 1991 from Stanford University School of Medicine, he codiscovered the transcription factor Nuclear Factor of Activated T Cells (NFAT) with J.P. Shaw in Dr. Gerald Crabtree's laboratory. As noted on Dr. Crabtree's website, P.J. incorrectly named the transcription factor (it is not Nuclear, and it is not specific for Activated T Cells). P.J. completed his internal medicine residency, rheumatology fellowship, and post-doctoral training at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston prior to joining the Harvard Medical School Faculty in 1996. He left Dr. Paul Anderson's lab in 1999, and his lab at Stanford began experiments in the Spring of 2000.
P.J. has expertise in the study of human and murine autoantibodies and autoantigens, apoptosis signaling pathways, animal models of autoimmunity, proteomics and microfluidics. Members of his laboratory are developing several cutting-edge proteomics technologies for immunological applications, including multiplex planar-based autoantigen microarrays and microfluidic CE assays. P.J. is actively involved with many educational programs within the University. He is director of the SIMR Summer High School Research Program, and he provides formal lectures to undergraduate, graduate, and medical students in the School of Medicine and the School of Engineering. He is associate director of the Stanford Medical Scientist Training Program. He also teaches medical students, residents and fellows in the clinics and on the in-patient wards. Professor Utz is a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of several Bay Area biotechnology companies. He is also actively involved in consulting with biotechnology companies.
When not in the lab or clinic (or much more realistically in his office
writing research grants or performing mundane administrative tasks),
P.J. spends most of his free time with his wife and 2 children,
in their ridiculously-overpriced cottage in Portola Valley. He also enjoys
travel, golf, hiking, biking, laying on the beach, watching Red Sox baseball,
and performing ANY non-grant writing activities whatsoever.
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Mel Balboni, M.D., Ph.D.
Mel grew up in Manchester Connecticut. In 1990 she received a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Colby College (Waterville, ME) and entered the University of Connecticut MST Program. She received her M.D. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Science in 1999 and completed her Residency in Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Orange County (Orange, CA) in June 2002. She joined the Utz lab in 2003, during her pediatric rheumatology fellowship, to study autoantibody profiles of pediatric lupus patients. She is now an Instructor of Pediatrics and continues her studies of pediatric rheumatic diseases in the Utz laboratory. When not in the lab or taking care of patients, Mel can be found enjoying happy hour with friends, rescuing stray wildlife from the jaws of death, cycling around the bay area, or training for her next marathon (of sleep that is).
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Regina (Wedge) Cheung
is a New Jersey-bred California girl: after getting her BS (in engineering) at Caltech, she spent 5 years in Boston (getting an MS in mechanical engineering at MIT in the process) before returning to CA to work on a Ph.D. in Immunology at Stanford, where she hopes to integrate her engineering degrees with technology and lupus research. Her thesis aims to elucidate dendritic cell signaling in SLE. As such, she is a member of both the Utz and Nolan labs. When she's not at school or taking care of her son Julian (born Sept 2008), she enjoys playing video games with her husband Robin, hiking, cooking, and photography (which is usually mixed up with all her other hobbies).
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Rohit K. Gupta
has been working at Stanford University since 2005. His research career began in Multiple Sclerosis under the guidance of Dr. Lawrence Steinman. Following this, he went on to work for the Stanford Prevention Research Center studying Osteoporosis. Rohit then took a year off, before returning to the lab of Dr. PJ Utz, as lab manager, and became responsible for the Stanford Immunology Registry. With the support of the Division of Immunology, Rohit expanded the services offered by the registry to the School of Medicine, and now, in conjunction with the Human Immune Monitoring Core is running the blood processing center at 1070 Arastradero. He is planning to attend graduate school to receive his MBA in the near future. In his spare time, Rohit loves spending time exploring with his wife and dog, as well as working as a freelance web designer & developer.
Jamie Haddon
grew up in the Great White North and received his bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Victoria. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in medical genetics in Dr. Kelly McNagny's lab at the University of British Columbia. Jamie has been a postdoctoral fellow in the Utz Lab since December 2010. He is interested in developing and using new technologies to learn about the mechanisms underlying autoimmune disease. Currently he is investigating the role of autoreactive T helper cells in the pathogenesis of sytemic lupus erythematosus. Away from work, Jamie likes to spend time with his family, travel, mountain bike, play soccer and read.
Justin Jarrell
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Justin is a California-native, born and raised in the Bay Area. He currently lives in the ‘garlic capital of the world,’ where he treats himself to a scoop of garlic ice cream each year at the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival. Justin completed his undergraduate studies at Santa Clara University where he majored in biology and minored in chemistry and biotechnology. Justin has been a life science research assistant in the Utz Lab since August 2009. A ‘jack-of-all-trades,’ Justin currently works on multiple projects, which include developing novel array-based methods to measure antibody response to influenza vaccination, characterizing antigen-specific T cell responses in SLE using novel tetramer reagents, and identifying surface marker profiles on human cardiac progenitors to explore cellular pluripotency. During the off chance Justin isn’t probing arrays, he can usually be found either trail running, mountain biking, wakeboarding, or if it’s hockey season, rooting for his San Jose Sharks! Justin is currently applying to medical scientist training programs for Fall 2012.
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Cindy Limb
lived most of her life on the east coast and came out to sunny California in 2000 with her husband and three active daughters. She grew up in Philadelphia and then went to Boston for college where she received her bachelors at M.I.T. and a masters at Harvard. She loved Boston so much that she spent 13 years there, doing research at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and then teaching freshmen biology at M.I.T. for several years. Now on the west coast, she joined P.J.'s lab where she hopes to get back into research and to gain experience in the newest technologies in bio research.
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Chih Long Liu
was born and raised in Saratoga, California. He attended Stanford University, where he majored in the biological sciences. He was also an undergraduate member of the Brown Lab, where he worked with three MSTP students on gene expression profiling of activating T lymphocytes. Afterwards, he spent six years in Massachusetts, developing TLAD and mononucleosomal resolution ChIP-chip, profiling histone modifications and receiving a Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology at Harvard University. He then spent a 1-year postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Oliver Rando, now at UMass Medical School. After having enough of the New England winters, he returned to sunny California and joined both the Utz and Gozani laboratories, where he is studying neutrophils and their link to lupus. He also supervises numerous collaborations which involve the lab's protein microarray platforms. When not in the lab, Chih Long enjoys traveling and has visited Canada, Mexico, Russia, Thailand, Taiwan, most of the countries of Europe, and half of the 50 states in the US. Visit his web site for more information.
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Gil Mandelbaum
is a new recruit to the Utz Lab. Born in upstate New York, he moved to Palo Alto at a young age and grew up running around campus. Before returning back to the Farm a year ago, Gil took a long detour overseas and completed his bachleor's in chemistry at Tel Aviv University in Israel. Previous to joining the Utz Lab, he worked next door in the Steinman Lab on granulocytes in multiple sclerosis mouse models. As a life science research assistant, Gil will be collaborating with a variety of groups on auto-antigen arrays. Additionally, he is interested in T helper cell subsets and BAFF expression in B cells. In his free time, Gil enjoys photography (www.gilmpix.com), some train travel, lots of books and a good stout beer here and there. In the future he plans to do an around the world trip by land and sea.
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Jordan Price
is a 4th-year grad student in the lab. Hailing from Madison, Wisconsin, Jordan majored in biology and cello performance at Oberlin and spent time teaching in Ecuador before joining Stanford's immunology graduate program. He currently works on array-based methods to identify new biomarkers in systemic lupus erythematosus and other autoimmune diseases, and measuring antibody response to influenza vaccination. Jordan enjoys teaching and mentoring and has served as a TA in several classes, including a class he co-developed, "Brain and the Immune System", which examines the field of neuroimmunology from many angles. He has also served as a TA and mentor for the SIMR program. When he is not processing arrays or shaping the minds of future scientists, Jordan enjoys advocating for marriage equality, playing cello in chamber music groups and with the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (BARS), reading the memoirs of iconoclast historical figures, and his weekly hardcore nerd sci-fi watching club.
Jake Rosenberg
is an MD/PhD student who is currently in clinical clerkships. He is interested in studying the relationship between infection and autoimmunity. When not working in the lab he likes long walks on the beach and eating ice cream, as long as it is not green pistachio ice cream.
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Michael Wong
graduated from Cal with a degree in Molecular Biology. He is now a first year graduate student at the Utz Lab, and his interests entail elucidating the role of TH-17 in various autoimmune diseases. In his spare time, Mike enjoys playing football.
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Gloria Yiu
is an MD/PhD student in the Stanford Medical Scientist Training Program. She grew up in Saratoga, California and earned her bachelors at Pomona College (CHIRP!) where she studied molecular biology and contemporary Chinese literature. She is currently interested in the roles of type I and type II interferons in systemic lupus erythematosus pathogenesis and antigen specific T cell populations in autoimmunity. Outside of lab, Gloria promotes medical and graduate student wellness and serves on a variety of Stanford Medical School committees dedicated to developing programming for student happiness and advocacy. Additionally, she is an avid practitioner of Bikram Yoga and enjoys jamming (vocals, piano, guitar), creating culinary feasts, antiquing and figure art using a variety of media. As the lab social coordinator, she also facilitates merriment through consumption of food and spirits.
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Sharon Dickow
is a seasoned Administrative Associate in the Division of Rheumatology. She helps PJ extricate himself from all of the many administrative fiascos he creates. She can be reached at (650) 723-7038, by Fax at (650) 723-7509, and by email at sdickow@stanford.edu.
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Jeff
is our webmaster. He's a freelance programmer and web site developor with skills in C++, PHP, Perl, MySQL, HTML and other programming languages. When not updating this site, he teaches science in New York City and at the Johns Hopkins CTY program during the summer. He coaches soccer, flag football and flag rugby. He also teaches robotics and chess. Besides playing chess in the park, he enjoys biking and reading fiction, biography and about science and nature.
