Sheila Alizadeh

BA Biology, Northwestern University, 2022

I began my undergraduate career at the University of Hong Kong. Here, I joined the lab of Dr. Moriaki Yasuhara. During my time there, I studied the impacts of climate on ostracod species diversity. 

I returned stateside during the summer break, taking up a position in the lab of Holger Russ at the University of Colorado. As an intern in the Russ Lab, I had the opportunity to work with stem cells to study the role of the thymus in Type I diabetes. While there, I helped create a protocol to generate human thymic cells from iPSCs. After my second year of undergrad, I transferred to Northwestern University.

At Northwestern, I joined Dr. Reza Vafabakhsh’s lab. Here, I focused my research on calcium and glutamate receptor dimers. I ultimately wrote my senior thesis on the role of GPCR tail length in β-arrestin recruitment.

Currently, I am a joint-PhD student in the Littman and Mazzoni labs. My project will focus on mechanisms of epigenetic regulation involved in thymocyte lineage commitment.

Publications:

1. Ramos SA, Morton JJ, Yadav P, Reed B, Alizadeh SI, Shilleh AH, Perrenoud L, Jaggers J, Kappler J, Jimeno A, Russ HA. Generation of functional human thymic cells from induced pluripotent stem cells. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2022