Networking with lecturers

Kristīne Oleinika

Kristīne Oleinika obtained a First Class BSc Honours degree in Immunology at the University of Glasgow and was awarded the British Society for Immunology Prize upon graduating. Her dissertation on regulatory T cells in cancer was published in Clinical and Experimental Immunology and has been cited 126 times (Scopus). Kristīne was then awarded the prestigious and highly competitive MRC Bench to Bedside PhD studentship to work with Professor Claudia Mauri at University College London (UCL; ranked 8th globally according to QS World University rankings 2020). During her PhD Kristine investigated how B cells mediate suppression of inflammation by modulating invariant natural killer T cells. This project led to a first author publication in Nature Communications and was also covered by Nature Reviews Rheumatology.

Kristīne was also significantly involved in investigating the role of the microbiota in the induction of B cells with regulatory function (Nature Medicine). That paper has received 160 citations. Other highlights of her work include a comprehensive review article on B cells in immune-mediated kidney disease in Nature Reviews Nephrology, and a book chapter on B cell activation and tolerance in The Autoimmune Diseases (Elsevier) with contributions from world-renowned faculty. Continuing her work on B cells with Professor Mauri, Kristīne is now investigating how modulating B cell metabolism through changes in diet can impact their function in cancer. Additionally, Kristīne holds an honorary contract with the National Health Service (UK), and is working with an industry collaborator on uncovering novel immune targets in systemic lupus erythematosus with a focus on neutrophil extracellular traps. Kristīne has over three years immunology teaching experience at UCL. Even though Kristine has left Latvia, she has maintained close ties with the Latvian academic and research communities. She is a Latvian Council of Science medical and health sciences expert. Kristīne has worked in the laboratory of Professor Maija Dambrova, Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis and as Visiting Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, RSU. She is also the Principal Investigator on a project dissecting the interplay between intestinal dysbiosis and B cell function in the pathogenesis of immunoglobulin A nephropathy at RSU.

Carlos Donado

Carlos Donado obtained his BSc in Biomedical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. While pursuing his BSc, Carlos volunteered as a research assistant in Dr Marsha Rolle’s laboratory where he worked on engineering cell-based human blood vessels. Prior to finishing his undergraduate studies, Carlos also spent a year working at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research. While at Novartis, he was part of a quantitative biology team that conducted bioinformatics analyses of large-scale genomic and proteomic data sets. After graduating, Carlos spent two years working in Dr Shiv Pillai’s Laboratory at Harvard University, where he described how a prevalent missense mutation hyperactivates a specific protein to drive a B cell lymphoma.

Upon his acceptance at Harvard University’s Immunology PhD program, Carlos worked in the laboratories of Dr Jonathan Kagan, Dr Richard Blumberg, and Dr Dennis Kasper prior to joining Dr Michael Brenner’s laboratory for his dissertation work. In Dr Brenner’s laboratory, Carlos described a new pathway by which immune responses are generated during infection with pathogens that typically evade detection by the immune system. During his PhD, Carlos developed a passion for teaching and taught a number of courses at Harvard for over 5 years. Among those, Carlos has been teaching Molecular and Cellular Immunology to the undergraduate students for three years in a row, for which Harvard has recognized him with an award for excellence in teaching. He also served as teaching assistant for a course on Advanced Principles of Immunology taught to PhD students at Harvard. Additionally, he has taught an immunology bootcamp for the first year Immunology PhD students for three consecutive years. Outside of Harvard, Carlos has taught a week-long introductory immunology course for the PhD students at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories on two separate occasions.

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