Dr. Rhodes received her PhD in microbiology from Colorado State University where she studied the regulation of antimicrobial resistance in Burkholderia pseudomallei under the mentorship of Dr. Herbert Schweizer. For her postdoctoral training, Dr. Rhodes joined the lab of Dr. Maggie So at the University of Arizona, where she studied commensalism in the Neisseria genus. Dr. Rhodes joined the Immunobiology department as an Assistant Professor in 2023.
Research Interests
Prabhu Arunachalam received his Ph.D. in India and subsequently trained with Prof. Bali Pulendran at Stanford University. Prabhu’s research at the intersection of immunology and vaccinology has defined cooperative immune mechanisms by which the innate and adaptive arms of the immune system synergize to induce durable protection against HIV and SARS-CoV-2 infection.
I was born in 1978 and raised near Fremantle, Western Australia. I completed my BSc (Hons) in Biotechnology at Murdoch University in 2000. I then worked as a research assistant in Patrick G Holt’s laboratory at the Telethon Kids Institute for 1.5 years, before enrolling in a PhD program in the Holt lab to study immunology and genomics. I was awarded my PhD in 2007 from the University of Western Australia.
Michael D. L. Johnson received his bachelors from Duke University. He obtained a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Biophysics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied the effects of calcium on bacterial motility and attachment under the mentorship of Matthew Redinbo. For his postdoctoral training, Michael Johnson went to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in order to work with Jason Rosch on metal homeostasis of Streptococcus pneumoniae and subsequently with Douglas Green on the mechanisms of LC3-associated phagocytosis.
Dr. Nafees Ahmad received his BS (Hons) in Chemistry and MS in Biochemistry from one of the prestigious central universities in India, The Aligarh Muslim University. He then joined another renowned research institute, The Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow, India, from where he earned his Ph.D. in 1983. Dr. Ahmad did his Postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, Maryland, USA from 1985-1990 in the Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Deepta Bhattacharya received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, studying the role of the NF-kB transcription factor in survival and B cell class switching. For his postdoctoral fellowship, he trained at Stanford University, studying the cell biology of hematopoietic stem cells and their differentiated progeny. In 2008, he began his own lab at Washington University in St. Louis, first as an Assistant Professor and then as a tenured Associate Professor. Dr.
Michael Kuhns did his PhD training with James Allison at UC Berkeley studying the role that CTLA-4 plays in regulating CD4 T cell responses. He then went on to Stanford University for his postdoctoral studies with Mark Davis, studying the architecture and function of the TCR-CD3 complex, and joined the Department of Immunobiology at the University of Arizona in 2010. When in search of a mental diversion, he enjoys mountain biking and hiking in the local desert and sky islands.
