Post-Docs
Sally Demirdjian, PhD – 2020-2022. Sally spearheaded our COVID studies. She is currently working in Clinical Development (Virology) at Gilead.
Mike Kratochvil, PhD – 2016-2021. Mike divided his time between the Bollyky lab and the Heilshorn lab. Mike is currently a Research Scientist at Exponent focusing on Polymer Science and Materials Chemistry.
Christiaan Robert de Vries, MD, PhD- Instructor, 2018-2021. Christiaan completed his Infectious Diseases fellowship at Stanford and was an Instructor in the ID division here. Christiaan is currently a Director of Clinical Development (Virology) at Gilead, focusing on HIV/AIDs clinical trials.
Jonas Van Belleghem – Post Doc, 2018-2021. Jonas studied phages and human immunology. He is doing a second post-doc in Zurich.
Ievgen Koliesnik – Post-Doc, 2018-2020. Zhenya studied the role of extracellular matrix in immune regulation. He is currently a staff scientist at Synthekine.
Gina Suh – Assistant Professor, 2016-2018. Dr. Gina was an original member of Team Phage. She moved to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN to start her own research program as an Assistant Professor in the Infectious Diseases division. She is busy stamping out antibiotic resistant wound infections as the Director and Founder of The Mayo Clinic Phage Therapy Center.
Hedwich Kuipers – Post-Doc, 2014-2018. Hedwich was a member of both the Bollyky and Steinman labs at Stanford. She investigated autoimmunity from a neuronal background with a research focus in Multiple Sclerosis. Hedwich is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary. Go Hedwich!
Xiou Cao – Post-Doc, 2018. Xiou studied bacteriophages in wound infections with Pseudomonas aeruginosa. He moved back to China and is a Staff Scientist at the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute.
Vivekananda Sunkari – Post Doc, 2013-2017. Vivek headed the wound healing team/research in the Bollyky lab. After the Bollyky Lab Vivek took a Senior Scientist position at BriaCell Therapeutics.
Koshika Yadava – Post Doc, 2015-2017. Koshika divided her time between the Bollyky and Nadeau labs here at Stanford. Koshika left to do a 2nd post-doc in skin immunology the Ogg lab at Oxford .
Ben Danielson – Post Doc, 2015-2016. Ben studied CD44 in the lab. Ben is a Scientist at CERo Pharmaceuticals. He also distills his own vodka (presumably for research purposes).
Shannon Ruppert – Post Doc, 2013-2015. Shannon Ruppert characterized the roles of Hyaluronan and CD44 in immune function. Shannon is a Senior Research Scientist at Genentech working on cancer immunotherapy.
Graduate Students
Carlos Medina – 2015 -2020 Carlos studied immune regulation in asthma and other airway inflammatory diseases in the Bollyky Lab. He also had leadership roles in multiple mentorship, minority recruitment, and LGBTQ support programs on campus. After graduation, Carlos moved to Baltimore where is heading up a diversity and inclusion program at Johns Hopkins.
Payton Marshall – 2015-2020 Payton was a MSTP student in the Immunology PhD program. He came into the lab with a strong background in engineering and microfluidics in particular. Payton successfully defended his thesis, sharing his excellent work on pericellular matrix and antigen presentation. Dr. Marshall will now be working to complete his medical degree at Stanford.
Jolien Sweere – 2013-2018 Jolien was amazing. She singlehandedly built up our bacteriophage research program and developed most of the animal models, cell lines, and other tools we use for that work. Her research was published as a first author manuscript in Science. Jolien is currently working at Charles River Associates on biotechnology consulting.
Maria Birukova – 2014 -2016 Maria was a MSTP and Immunology PhD student. Maria worked on the role of Pseudomonas and phage in chronic wounds. She passed away on September 18th during a mountain climbing accident. Maria is greatly missed by the Bollyky lab and the Stanford community.
Senior Staff Members
Alana Persaud – 2017-2020 Alana was our lab manager for 3 years. She came to us after several decades at at HHMI lab in New York .
Robert Manasherob – 2016 Robert was our resident molecular biology expert. He has over 20 years of experience. Robert spent a year enhancing the microbiology aspects of our Pseudomonas and phage research. He is now working on phage projects with our collaborator Derek Amantullah in Orthopedics.
Heather Ishak – 2014-2017 Heather was the lab manager for the Bollyky lab for over 3 years. Heather was an essential part of the diabetes and bacterial biofilm research in the lab. She moved on to take a lab manager’s position at the Palo Alto VA.
Ben Falk – Researcher, Staff – 2013-2014 Ben moved from Seattle with Paul to start-up the Stanford Bollyky lab. We are what we are today because of Ben and Mary’s efforts. Sadly for us, Ben moved to LA and manages a lab at City of Hope Hospital.
Staff
Riya Goel – 2021 Riya worked as our clinical trial coordinator assistant for our Hymecromone clinical trial. She also helped out in the lab on various experiments.
Stanford Undergraduates
Michelle Bach – 2016-2019 Michelle was a superstar undergraduate at Stanford who was a mainstay of our lab for several years. She worked closely with Jolien Sweere and developed our wound models. She is bound for medical school, public health and many, many great things.
Ethan Katznelson – 2013-2016 Ethan was a Bollyky lab regular; he worked in the lab for 3 years while he was an undergratuate student at Stanford. He worked closely with Jolien Sweere on the Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm research. Ethan is now attending Harvard Medical School.
Jason Yang – 2013-2015 Jason was an undergraduate who spent 2013 working as a lab aid in the Bollyky lab. Jason worked on wound healing projects as well as diabetes drug treatment studies. He is currently a graduate student in bioinformatics at Stanford.
Omar Garcia – 2014-2015 Omar started as a lab assistant with tasks essential to maintaining the lab and the vivarium. A year later and he received a BioX summer funding and worked on iron sequestration in Pseudomonas aeruginosa with Jolien Sweere.
Visiting Scholars:
Dan Liu – 2019-2020 Dan was a visiting PhD student from Shanghai JiaoTong University School of Medicine, China. Dan worked on our studies of the immune response to phage-therapy.
Svenja Zihsler – 2018-2019 Svenja is a MSc/PhD student in molecular medicine in Germany at the University of Göttingen. She studied the role of the extracellular matrix in immune regulation in neurology models.
Summer Students:
Sasvath Ramachandran – 2021
COVID – 2020
Quynh Tran – 2019
Sim Low – 2019
Svenja Zihsler- 2018
Amrit Ramesh – 2018
Ciara Lee – 2018
Jerry Guo – 2017
Esther Wang – 2017
Chloe Fishman- 2016, 2017
Aadyot Bhatnagar – 2015
Jasmine Edwards – 2015
Daniel Lazzareschi – 2014
Colin Lester – 2014, 2016
The Bollyky Lab 