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Christopher Berger, MD
I am an assistant professor in the UCSF Division of Pulmonary Critical Care Medicine, clinically based at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. My research focuses on improving tuberculosis screening, diagnosis, and treatment programs globally through the use of implementation science and human-centered design principles. I work with Dr. Adithya Cattamanchi on projects in the Philippines to improve the diagnostic and clinical tools used in MDR and XDR TB and in Uganda designing improved versions of the globally utilized “Directly Observed Therapy” toolkit.
Devan Jaganath, MD, MPH
I am an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Global Health. My research is focused on diagnostics, biomarker discovery, data science and digital health to improve TB care, with a particular interest in childhood TB. I am part of the END Childhood TB Study in Kampala, Uganda to evaluate novel non-sputum, biomarker-based tests for pediatric pulmonary TB. In biomarker discovery, I am working to identify a urine-based proteomic biosignature for diagnosing childhood TB, and I am part of the COMBO study to examine other novel pathogen and host biomarkers for TB diagnosis in children. I also examine mobile and digital health innovations to improve TB diagnosis and monitoring, including the development of electronic medical record (EMR)-based tools to improve the screening and management of children with latent TB infection.
Haig Alexander Eskandarian, PhD
I am a research scientist in the Division of Experimental Medicine. Mycobacterial pathogens have an uncanny ability to persist disparate stresses, including antibiotics and host cell immunity. My research is focused on understanding why individual bacilli within an isogenic population of bacteria are refractory to killing by cidal stresses despite harboring genetic sensitivities. We developed long-term time-lapse atomic force microscopy as a disruptive advanced imaging modality to discover the phenotypic determinants that distinguish stress-tolerant bacteria. Together with genome-scale mutational studies aimed at identifying the molecular determinants of tolerance phenotypes, we aim to identify novel molecular targets for developing antibiotics to effectively treat mycobacterial infections.
Marjorie Imperial, PhD
I am a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutics Sciences under the mentorship of Rada Savic. My research focuses on integrating data from multiple sources and applying pharmacometric approaches with machine learning techniques to quantitatively characterize the interplay between disease dynamics, optimal regimens, and treatment response in patients with tuberculosis. Our goal is to provide innovative tools for assigning optimal regimens to each patient and designing novel clinical trials that facilitate early and effective deployment of the best regimens for the right patients.
Matthew Kutys, PhD
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell and Tissue Biology. My lab engineers biomimetic models of human tissues to better understand development, regeneration, and disease. We are studying the communication between TB granulomas and the host microenvironment, and the impact of this communication on granuloma phenotype. We seek to engineer a new in vitro modular biomimetic model of a 3D vascularized human tuberculosis (TB) granuloma to determine local factors influence immune function to control the outcome of TB infection.
Sophie Huddart, PhD, MSc
I'm a TB epidemiologist and postdoctoral scholar with Adithya Cattamanchi's group. I'm interested in TB quality of care, especially how it influences the long-term outcomes of TB patients after treatment. I also enjoy exploring how advanced analytic techniques and simulation can address scarce data issues in global health.