Dr. Herold's background and research are in translational immunology. He is interested in understanding the basis for autoimmune diseases and developing new therapies based on an understanding of disease mechanisms. Dr. Herlod's focus has largely been in the field of autoimmune Type 1 diabetes. The work encompasses basic laboratory work as well as clinical studies to understand the regulation of autoreactive T cells to clinical trials that involve novel therapeutics with a focus on identifying the immune cells responsible for attacking the pancreatic islets, as well as studying how beta cells respond to these attacks.

As part of these studies the Herold Lab  has been very interested in analysis of beta cell function in Type 1 diabetes and identifying the cellular mechanisms that can protect them from immune killing. His group has also been studying the development of autoimmune diabetes in patients with cancers who are treated with checkpoint inhibitors. Dr. Herold's clinical and basic studies are focused on understanding how beta cells are destroyed and react to inflammation, with the ultimate goal being to stop disease before it progresses to permanent organ damage.

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Dr. Ankit Shah received his undergraduate and medicaldegrees from Rutgers University. He completed his internal medicine and endocrinology training at Columbia University. He is currently a clinical and translational investigator at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and uses stable isotope methodologies to better understand substrate utilization in hepatic gluconeogenesis.

Dr. Fite obtained his PhD degree in nanomedicine and immunology from University of Würzburg, Germany in 2015. Then, he joined Columbia University in June 2016 for his postdoctoral training and was later promoted to Associate Research Scientist. At Columbia, he led several research projects on antigen-specific immunotherapy (ASIT) of autoimmune diabetes, immune tolerance, and nanomedicine. He developed and proved the efficacy of two nanoscale therapeutics that are easily adaptable as a platform technology for a variety of human diseases. He also established a method to selectively target certain cell types and reprogram them in vivo for epitope-based precision immunotherapy. His findings support the possibility of applying a precision medicine using customized multiple epitopes (peptides) and nanoscale delivery technology for the treatment of autoimmune diabetes.

Dr. Fite is interested to conduct translational research in immunology and nanomedicine. Particularly, he is keen to understand how the nature/chemistry of the β cell-derived antigens, their way of delivery to antigen-presenting cells and the local microenvironment dictates the fate of autoreactive T cells. The goal is to understand key parameters that determine the type of antigen-specific immune responses triggered by a given self-antigen(s), a critical feature required to design effective precision immunotherapy. Dr. Fite's research interest extends to establishing a human immune system mouse models that recapitulate the pathophysiology of autoimmune diabetes in humans to test novel ASITs and better understand the disease mechanisms.

Dr. Eunhee Choi completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the UT Southwestern Medical Center under the supervision of Dr. Hongtao Yu. She worked on the function of cell division regulators and discovered an unexpected connection between cell division regulators and insulin signaling. Now she is an assistant professor in Columbia University, where her research focuses on the function, regulation, and mechanism of insulin receptor signaling. Recently her team discovered that insulin and insulin mimetics activate insulin receptor in different ways, providing insights into the development of new strategies for the treatment of insulin resistance.

Dr.Preeti Viswanathan is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the division of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore. She completed medical school at the Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences in Bangalore India, her Pediatrics Residency at the Niklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami and her Pediatric Gastroenterology fellowship at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore. Her previous researchhas included identification of mechanisms in acute and chronic hepatocellular injury to understand what pathways maybe targeted for therapy. Pediatric MASLD, which is now the most common chronic liver disease of childhood is now her central focus as a clinician and researcher. Oxidative stress and inflammation are shared in pediatric and adult disease, however, a unique aspect to be considered in children is that the liver is still growing. As the period of active liver growth in children relies heavily in genomic integrity, she is trying to understand how mechanistic processes that oversee the maintenance of genomic and mitochondrial integrity in this setting of ongoing liver growth could impact outcomes.