Steven Bosinger

Principal Investigator

Steve received his PhD in Microbiology & Immunology from the University of Western Ontario in 2007. While there, he focused his research on studying the pathogenic events in early HIV and SIV infection. He completed his postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania with Guido Silvestri, MD. While there, he began his work studying how African monkey species, such as the Sooty Mangabey, avoid AIDS despite lifelong SIV infection. He was awarded a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Fellowship and in 2008 received one of five Young Investigator Awards from the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise.

Amit Upadhyay

Research Assistant Professor

Amit’s research focuses on using next-generation sequencing data to gain insights into immune responses to vaccines in humans and non-human primates. His work involves analyzing single-cell RNA-Seq data along with repertoire sequencing data to map transcriptional profiles to clonal lineages. Prior to joining the Bosinger lab in 2016, Amit worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville where he was studying the evolution of sensory domains in microbial signal transduction.

 Amit received his Ph.D. in Life Sciences from the University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Graduate School of Genome Science and Technology, Knoxville in 2015. He obtained a master's degree in Bioinformatics from Northeastern University, Boston in 2010. He also has bachelor's (2006) and master's (2008) degrees in Microbiology from the University of Mumbai, India.

Michelle Lee

Postdoctoral Fellow 

Michelle received her Ph.D in Molecular Virology from the University of Melbourne in 2018 while based at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. Using a novel target enrichment and RNA-Seq workflow, she studied the nature of HIV-1-sequence-containing RNAs generated through aberrant splicing in cells latently infected with the virus. She joined the Bosinger Lab in 2019, where the primary focus of her research is to elucidate the role of plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs), and type I Interferon in persistence of SIV in ART-treated, chronically infected nonhuman primates. At present, she is investigating the effect of antibody-mediated depletion of pDCs on immune exhaustion and the latent reservoir in rhesus macaques. 

Michelle is Taiwanese-South African. In her spare time, she enjoys long walks, observing the natural world and reading/learning about anything and everything outside the sphere of infectious diseases research. 

Stacey Lapp

Lab Manager

Stacey manages the Bosinger research lab and is currently working on SARS CoV-2 variant surveillance from wastewater. His background is in evolutionary and molecular biology with a research focus on antigenic variation in non-human primate models of malaria. More recently he has worked on furthering the development of vaccines to respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) as well as comparative serology in children with acute COVID-19 and multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C). He received a M.S. in Entomology from UGA and a M.S.P.H. from Tulane and joined the Emory Vaccine Center in 2001. Stacey’s main hobbies include cooking, fishing, and playing/watching video games.

Nagarajan Raju

Associate Bioinformatics Scientist

Nagarajan Raju completed his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology from Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), India. Earlier, he worked as a project assistant at a bioinformatics center, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India, where he mainly focused on the computational analysis of protein structures and interactions. After his Ph.D., he joined Dr. Georgiev‘s laboratory as a post-doctoral research fellow in April 2016 and focused on computational immunology research. In March 2022, he joined the Bosinger lab as an Associate Bioinformatics Scientist where he will be focusing on the analysis of bulk and scRNAseq data to understand the immune responses due to infection and/or vaccination.

Amanda Metz

Lead Research Specialist

Amanda serves as the Lead Research Specialist in the Bosinger Lab and is currently working on SARS CoV-2 variant surveillance from wastewater. She is also involved in pDC depletion in chronically infected SIV rhesus macaques and creating a B-cell sequencing library. 

Amanda received her B.S. in Biochemistry at Texas Woman’s University where she studied biophysical properties and DNA-Ligand interactions in G-Quadruplexes and i-Motif structures. Previously, she worked in the Genomics Core at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences which provided Next Generation Sequencing services to collaborators within the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute.  

Amanda is an avid sports fan and enjoys the arts. She likes to read in her free time and plans to travel the world. 

Kirti Karunakaran

Lead Research Specialist

Kirti currently serves as the Lead Research Specialist in the Bosinger Lab. She is currently working on pDC depletion in chronically infected SIV rhesus macaques and creating a B-Cell sequencing library. 

Previously, Kirti studied at Georgia Institute of Technology where she received her Master's and Bachelor’s in Biology. She is the first accepted student and graduate of the new Biology 5-year BS/MS program. Her master's thesis focused on exploring the significance of a p53 mutation in a homogenous genetic background. 

Kirti enjoys spending her time playing board games, listening to music, and hanging out with friends and family. 

Thang Thon

Research Specialist

Thắng currently serves as a research specialist in the Bosinger's lab. He's involved in pDC depletion and B-cell repertoire sequencing research in SIV infected Rhesus Macaques. He graduated from Franklin & Marshall College in 2020 with a B.A. in Biology, where he conducted research on the immune system of Dp(16)1/Yey mice model.

Thắng spends his free time playing video games, and learning musical instruments and languages.

Chris Edwards

PhD Student

Chris received his B.A. in Biochemistry from Washington University in St. Louis in 2018 where he studied the role of polyamines in the packaging of viral particles during influenza infection. He then worked for 2 years at Confluence Discovery Technologies, a drug discovery company also based out of St. Louis. There, he focused on developing biochemical and cell-based assays to gather PK/PD data on small molecule inhibitors targeting kinases that have implications in inflammatory disease pathogenesis, such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, and ulcerative colitis. He also developed a click-chemistry based technique using reactive analogs of ATIs to measure target occupancy, which he presented at the Discovery on Target (2019) as well as at SLAS Conference and Exhibition (2020). 

 Chris began his graduate studies in the Immunology and Molecular Pathogenesis PhD program at Emory in the fall of 2020 as a Centennial Scholar. After joining the Bosinger lab in the spring of 2021, he began working on developing technology to accelerate the isolation of broadly neutralizing antibodies recognizing discrete HIV epitopes using barcoded envelope trimers and integrated B cell bioinformatics. Chris is also using these barcoded probes to investigate differential gene expression among antigen specific memory B cells in HIV vaccination studies. 

 In his free time, Chris enjoys outdoor activities including skateboarding and running, as well as drawing, practicing piano, and learning new languages. 

Curtis Lin

Research Specialist

Curtis currently serves as a research specialist in the Bosinger Lab. He currently works on an immunogenic dosage study in R. Macaques models for saRNA vaccine against Yellow fever and Zika. He has also worked on a study involving the protective effects of a S2 monoclonal antibody against SARS-CoV-2 and pDC depletion in SIV infected R. Macaques. Curtis graduated with a B.S. in Neuroscience from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2022.

In his free time, Curtis enjoys lifting, photography, and trying out new restaurants.