Utz Lab Members
Click here for emeritus members.
The lab hike to Big Basin. Left to Right: Donna Thibault,
Mike Kattah, Angela Landrigan, Candace Cham, Jessie Tenenbaum, Mel Balboni
(with PJ Utz behind and Ashley Utz in front of her), Golnaz Alemi, Andrzej
Chruscinski, Steve Chan, and Jonathan Steinman.
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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 CCIS 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 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 young 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. Since that time she has been a Pediatric Rheumatology Fellow at Stanford and recently joined the Utz lab to study autoantibody profiles of pediatric lupus patients. 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, or training for her next marathon (of sleep that is).
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Candace Cham
was born in Pasadena, California. She studied Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of California at Berkeley with an emphasis in immunology and received her Ph.D. in Cancer Biology at the University of Chicago in 2004. She did her thesis research in the lab of Thomas Gajewski and studied CD8+ T cell differentiation and the metabolic requirements of CD8+ effector T cells. She joined the Utz Lab in July 2005 and works in collaboration with Hugh McDevitt. Her research goals include studying the functional significance of voltage-gated calcium channels in T cells and using this knowledge to develop therapies to alleviate autoimmune disease. Outside of the lab, swimming is her main activity. Candace also likes to run, hike and do yoga. She likes to go on adventure travel trips with her husband, Mike. They hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu for our honeymoon (awesome trip, highly recommended).
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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. As such, she is a member of both the Utz and Nolan labs. When she's not at school, she enjoys playing video games with her husband Robin, playing with her two cats, hiking, cooking, and photography (which is usually mixed up with all her other hobbies).
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Andrzej Chruscinski
completed his medical studies and residency at the Stanford University School of Medicine and is a cardiologist at the Stanford University Medical Center. He joined the Utz lab in July of 2005 as a Postdoctoral Fellow. His research interests involve the application of proteomics technology to cardiovascular disease. Andrzej's interests encompass sailing, going fishing, running and skiing.
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Alvina Chu
Alvina grew up in Albany, New York. She attended college at Stanford University where she majored in the biological sciences. She received an M.D. in 2002 from the State University of New York at Buffalo and completed her residency in Internal Medicine in 2005 at the University of Chicago. Currently, she is a Rheumatology Fellow at Stanford and is very excited to be spending time in the Utz lab investigating Toll-like receptor and interferon signaling pathways in lupus. Her medical interests encompass all connective tissue diseases, including scleroderma. Outside of the lab, she enjoys traveling, walking, and listening to her favorite radio show, A Prairie Home Companion.
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Ritu Gupta
was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She migrated to India, completed premedical studies there and earned degree of Bachelor in Medicine, Bachelor in Surgery (MB.BS.) at M.R. Medical College of Karnataka (India) and completed internship at Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi (India). She then Joined Utz lab in November of 2005 as lab manager. While while managing lab, she is also preparing for the USMLE exams to pursue residency in internal medicine. She enjoys trekking, alternative rock, and spending time with her German Shepherd, Shoolu.
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Nicole Hanick
completed her B.A. while majoring in Biochemistry at Mount Holyoke. She joined the Utz lab as an Immunology Ph.D. student in April of 2007. Her research interests include developing peptide MHC arrays to look at autoreactive T cell responses in Diabetes and in Lupus. In her spare time she enjoys doing yoga.
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Peggy Ho, M.S., Ph.D.
, a member of Larry Steinman's lab, grew up in southeastern Michigan. She received her B.S. in Microbiology from Penn State University. She then moved back home and received both her M.S. and Ph.D. in Immunology and Microbiology from Wayne State University. Peggy decided it was time to move out west, so she joined Larry Steinman's lab as a postdoc in the fall of 2000, to work on the innate immune system and Toll-like receptor involvement in EAE, a mouse model for multiple sclerosis. She is considered an honorary member of the Utz lab because she helps with so many animal studies.
Currently, besides her work in the Steinman lab studying the efficacy of DNA tolerizing vaccines in treating mouse models of multiple sclerosis, Peggy is collaborating with several labs at Stanford, studying systemic lupus erythematosus and primary biliary cirrhosis (Utz Lab), rheumatoid arthritis (with Bill Robinson) and type 1 diabetes (with C. Garrison Fathman).
Free time? Is there such a thing???? If she's not fencing, Peggy can be found trying to make little kids cry as a referee at local fencing competitions. She also enjoys hiking/running the local trails, biking, a good bottle of wine helping Lowen garnish sick mice with apples, and listening to Reem and PJ serenade our mice.
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Michael Kattah
Mike grew up in Bethesda, Maryland. He attended Walt Whitman High School and received his black belt in Tang Soo Do under Dale Tompkins. After graduating from Georgetown University with a Bachelor of Science (2001), he participated in the NIH IRTA program for one year. He did not always plan for a future in science, but alas, dreams of becoming a back-up dancer for Britney Spears were shattered when he discovered he was tragically born without rhythm. He is currently a third-year MSTP student at Stanford University. Mike hopes to pursue a career in academic medicine as a clinician scientist. His research interests include the application of novel technologies to address elusive questions relating to basic immunology and immune-mediated diseases.
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Angela Landrigan
was born in Cambridge, MA. She graduated from Harvard College in 2004. She Joined the Utz lab 2005, where her research interests include immune evasion of tumors through activation of Toll-like receptor signaling pathways in cancer cells, lysate arrays and phospho-flow cytometry. In her spare time, she enjoys music (guitar, piano), soccer, ice skating, trying to run (aspiring member of the Special Lab of Utz running Group (SLUG)), nerdy computer stuff and chillage.
Listen to Angela on "Bleupered in the Morning" (Dec. 3, 2007).
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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 in 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 interested in employing his knowledge in epigenetics and skills in technology development to develop new proteomic platforms for profiling biomarkers in lupus. 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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Joe Mollick
Joe majored at Northwestern University in BMCB (Biochem, Molecular, Cellular Biology) and graduated to pursue further studies at the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston. There he earned his M.D., Ph.D. Joe trained as resident in Internal Medicine at Massachussetts General Hospital, Boston. He then did a fellowship in Medical Oncology at Stanford University and is currently Instructor of Medicine at Stanford University.
Dr. Mollick's research interests include novel chimeric monoclonal antibodies to treat solid tumors. In his spare time, Joe enjoys going to the opera and collecting art.
Veronika Sharp
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joined the Utz Lab in July 2005 as a Rheumatology fellow. She was born Veszprem, Hungary. She received her MD from the University Medical School of Pecs, Hungary. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Fathman Lab at Stanford and completed an internal medicine residency at Stanford University. She is interested in techniques for discovery of new disease markers for human autoimmune diseases, primarily systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Her hobbies include hiking, camping, sea kayaking, skiing, swimming and playing with her newborn daughter.
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Harvir Singh
is currently completing his Masters in Biology at Stanford University. He joined the Utz Lab in September of 2005, where his focus is the use of new technology to understand the signalling pathways in human diseases. He enjoys traditional Indian dance called Bhangra and is a member of the Stanford Bhangra team, 'Chardi Jawani.'
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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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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. Please email him with any suggestions for improving this site. He is available to do additional websites.
