Jay and Evonne presented their projects in the Annual Meeting for the American Association of Immunologists this past May 2022. Jay was awarded the 2022 AAI-Thermo Fisher Trainee Achievement Award. Congrats Jay!

Annabel presented her work on the modulation of nematode functions in response to Type 2 immunity-mediated evolutionary pressure in Hydra Conference in Greece.

Juan attended and presented his work in the 10th Annual Meeting of the International Cytokine & Interferon Society joint with the 4th International Conference on Innate Lymphoid Cells (ILC4) held this past September in Hawaii!

Evonne, Jay and Juan will be presenting their projects in the 2nd edition of the 'Type 2 Immunity in Homeostasis and Disease' to be held in Ghent, Belgium.

Congrats to our grad student Jay Ortiz for being awarded a 2022 NASEM Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship to study neuroimmune interactions in the sinonasal tract in the context of fungal allergen-mediated Type 2 allergic inflammation. He is one of 77 fellows selected from a highly-competitive national pool for their promise as scholars and teachers in their respective fields who have demonstrated exemplary commitment to their research and advancing diversity in the academy. He was also selected as a finalist in the HHMI Gilliam and Blavatnik Family Foundation Fellowship competitions.

Congrats to our grad student Jay Ortiz for being selected to give an oral presentation on his project at The American Association of Immunologists (AAI) Annual Meeting in Portland! He will also be presented with the 2022 AAI-Thermo Fisher Trainee Achievement Award, which recognizes up to 6 promising trainees in the field of immunology. Selection is based on career promise and presentation of an outstanding first-author abstract selected for oral presentation in a Block Symposium.

Our grad student Jay Ortiz has been elected to the 2022-2023 Graduate and Professional Student Assembly (GAPSA) Executive Board. He is thrilled to lead the IDEAL (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access, and Leadership) Student Council, charged with representing graduate and professional affinity group interests across all of Penn's twelve graduate schools. Jay will also represent GAPSA and IDEAL at the Penn University Council.

In his role as IDEAL Council Chair in GAPSA, our grad student Jay Ortiz has led a successful effort to cement the biggest investment in graduate and professional affinity groups in the history of GAPSA to the tune of $150K. These funds will be used to support social, academic, and professional development programming for underrepresented graduate and professional students across all of Penn's twelve graduate schools.

To start this year off in style & science, De’Broski Herbert was spotlighted through the lense of Creative Director, Kiana Williams for ProofPilot's Black History Month Spolight.

We have a new publication in the Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology! It is titled “Lingo3 regulates mucosal tissue regulation and promotes TFF2 dependent recovery from colitis.” The work was headed by Kelly Zullo and Heather Rossi has provided the final editorial touches. Other lab contributions came from Bonnie, Nicole, Chris, Karl, Yingbiao, Li-Yin and Rachel Cohen.

Congrats to our postdoc Juan Inclan-Rico for being awarded a Life Sciences Research Fellowship to study neuro-immune interactions in the skin in the context of S. mansoni infections!

We have another new review publication; this time in the Annual Review of Immunology! It is titled “Immune System Investigation Using Parasitic Helminths.” The writing was led by Bonnie Douglas.

Woods Hole Immunoparasitology Conference was a great time getting to see so many of our colleagues present their work. Congrats to our very own Annabel Ferguson for receiving an honorable mention for her WHIP poster and to Bonnie Douglas for receiving second prize for her WHIP presentation!

We have a new review publication in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology! It is titled “Neuroimmune regulatory networks of the airway mucosa in allergic inflammatory disease.” The writing was spearheaded by Evonne Jean with help from Juan and Heather.

Woods Hole Immunoparasitology Conference is starting Sunday 4/11 and is virtual this year. Our lab has always enjoyed participating in sharing our data and viewing other projects from brilliant people in the field. Go to this link for more information.

We have been having some great rotation students and we have gotten one more! Kevin Mears is doing his 3rd rotation in our lab. He is a graduate student in CAMB with a MVP (Microbiology, Virology, Parasitology) focus. His work during this rotation will investigate type 1 immune responses of toxoplasma in some of our mouse models.

We are happy to welcome another member to the Herbert Lab! Lucas Ethgen is our newest technician. He has experience as a volunteer in a clinic setting and as an EMT. He is looking to do some research while he prepares to apply for med school.

We have a new review publication in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology! It is titled “Tuft cells in the pathogenesis of chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps and asthma.” The worked was led by Elizabeth Sell of close collaborator Noam Cohen’s group as well as our own Jay Ortiz.

Progress is developing rapidly for a model crucial to Evonne‘s thesis work. She has developed a model that will look at the damage worms make when entering the skin barrier and the immediate responses that the immune system and neurons contribute.

We have another IGG rotation student in our lab, we are currently the home for Montserrat Arreguin for her second rotation. She will be working with a few different people in lab who are working on neuroimmunology projects.

Our new Postdoc Juan has recently been working on a project with Schistosoma mansoni which is not new for De’Broski as a researcher but new for the nab here at Penn. Here is a youtube video showing S. mansoni on the skin.

We would like to welcome another new member to the lab: Heather Rossi PhD. She comes to us from a fellow collaborator at Penn Ishmail Abdus-Saboor. She will help us get projects in that collaboration established, as well as take on some lab manager duties. Welcome Heather!

So many interesting and new models and techniques are being developed in our lab these days. PhD candidate Jay Ortiz has made great progress and started up his own new model using fungal allergens to study the nasal epithelium.

It’s a new year and the Herbert lab has established our goals/resolutions! We plan to be publishing a lot this year (hopefully some new projects) and continue to garner funding for our group of great scientists!

Our graduate student Evonne has co-founded an organization called Black in Immuno aimed at celebrating and amplifying the work of Black Immunologists across the globe. You can follow them on twitter @BlackInImmuno. Recently their page got shared by the singer/artist/entrepreneur MC Hammer.

Jay Ortiz has founded and is co-director for the Penn ​I​nterdisciplinary ​N​etwork for ​S​cientists ​P​romoting ​I​nclusion, ​R ​etention, and ​E​quity (​Penn INSPIRE​). It is a trainee-led coalition advocating for scientists and physicians historically marginalized and excluded in STEM across all degree and professional levels. We strive to create inclusive platforms, advocating for and implementing initiatives to empower individuals at the margins of Academia, with diverse gender identities, backgrounds, ethnicities, and sexual orientations. We are dedicated to expanding opportunities for current graduate and medical students, as well as postdoctoral fellows in the Penn community through outreach, fundraising, entrepreneurship, and media engagement initiatives. Follow it on Twitter @PennInspire

De’Broski Herbert has been invited back to his alma mater, Thomas Jefferson University, for a JCLS Distinguished Alumni Award Recipient Lecture on October 22nd. His talk will be titled ‘Worms, Cytokines & Immunity: A Whirlwind Tour’.

Two of our own graduate students are part of Penn’s Immunology Graduate Student Association (IGA) Board for 2020-2021; Jay Ortiz is co-director and Evonne Jean is Outreach Co-Chair!

We are pleased to officially welcome our newest post-doc Juan Inclan-Rico to the Herbert Lab! He comes to us from Mark Siracusa’s Lab out of Rutgers. He will be establishing some collaborative work with Ishmail Abdus-Saboor’s lab as well as Robert Greenberg’s lab both of which are also located at Penn.

We would like to welcome CAMB student Julia Flores to the Herbert lab. She has chosen to do her first rotation of grad school with us and will be working hard the next few months!

Penn’s Fall Research Resumption plan is now in effect. We are continuing to remain socially distant while in lab and most members of the lab are fully hitting the ground running with their projects. We have exciting new collaborations with labs we haven’t worked with before as well as new projects starting up by hopeful graduate students.

The Herbert Lab is welcoming another new member! Olivia Lenz DVM has joined the lab in this Fall as a Postdoctoral Fellow after graduating from the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine earlier in the year. She is working in both the Herbert and Lennon labs.

Officially joining the lab as part of their thesis training in Penn’s IGG program is former rotation student Evonne Jean! We are excited to have them start their work in lab and they are starting up an exciting collaboration with Ishmail Abdus-Saboor’s lab who will serve as Evonne’s co-mentor.

The Herbert lab has officially entered Penn’s Phase 2 for the resumption of research. We are now at about 50% capacity at any given hour in the lab. We are getting anxious and starting to produce some data again!

A former member of the lab has some exciting news, Rachel Cohen has decided to matriculate into the University of Colorado Anschutz’s Medical Scientist Training Program to pursue her MD-PhD!

Officially joining the Herbert lab is another grad student but familiar face in Annabel Ferguson! Her project will focus on host pressures on helminth selection and parasite gene expression.

The Herbert lab has officially entered Penn’s Phase 1 for the resumption of research. We may only be at 20% capacity at any given hour in the lab, but we are making the most of this invaluable lab time after all this writing and planning!

Officially joining the lab as part of his thesis training in Penn’s IGG program is former rotation student Jay Ortiz! We are excited to have him hit the ground running!

We in the Herbert Lab hope that everyone is staying safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Though we are not doing any wet lab work, we are all working hard from home on data analyzation, manuscript editing/preparation, and grant writing!

She did it! Kelly Zullo is now Doctor Kelly Zullo Ph.D. Immunology! She will be moving onto to a cushy new job and we wish her the best of luck!

We have a new rotation student in the Herbert lab; Evonne Jean joins as part of her second rotation in the IGG program here at Penn.

We have welcomed a new volunteer lab member, Devon Tucker to the lab. She is planning on applying to Vet School and is getting some research experience!

Mark your calendars: graduate student Kelly Zullo will defend her thesis project on January 22nd at 9:00 BRB 1st floor Auditorium!

Congrats to Li-Yin for her second paper this year that will be featured front cover; this time the title is Cell-Intrinsic Wnt4 Influences Conventional Dendritic Cell Fate Determination to Suppress Type 2 Immunity published in The Journal of Immunology!

Another one of our great technicians, Annabel Ferguson, has left the lab to pursue her PhD degree here at Penn in the Cell and Molecular Biology Program (CAMB). Good luck Annabel!

Our fantastic technician Karl Herbine has left the lab to start his graduate degree at Thomas Jefferson University. Good luck Karl!

Interested in ILC2’s? Check out this review written by members of our lab!

The summer student bonanza has begun! We have 4 this year!

• Joshua Worth has joined us again for the second year in a row as part of the STEM program. He is a rising high school junior at Kamehameha Schools Maui from Hawaii.

• Nisha Vora comes to us from another part of West Philly, Drexel University. She is a rising sophomore in the BS/MD program there.

• Essence Vinson has come to us from Coppin State who is a rising senior majoring in Biology.

• Joshua Whang is a rising Junior at Amherst College majoring in Classics.

IGG 1st Year Student Andrea Wong has her Preliminary Exam scheduled for May 28th, 2019. Wish her luck!

Thanks to everyone who attend this year’s Woods Hole Immunoparasitology Conference! Looking forward to next year when Elia Tait Wonjo is head organizer!

Mark your calendars for the next meeting that will be co-organized by Dr. Herbert: Keystone Symposia: Helminths – New Insights from Immunity to Global Health. December 8th-12th 2019 in Cape Town, South Africa. Link

Dr. Herbert is going on a helminth field study in Lagos, Nigeria which will focus on school-aged children.

WHIP is less than 1 month away! HOW EXCITING! Get ready! April 14th-17th. Hopefully we will have a solution to the Game of Thrones premiere for everyone on Sunday night (fingers crossed).

Check out this publication from the Vaughan lab that involved Chris Pastore and our lab collaborating! Development of solitary chemosensory cells in the distal lung after severe influenza injury.

Kelly Zullo, a 4th Year IGG student, has been selected to give an oral presentation on her project at The American Association of Immunologists (AAI) Annual Meeting in San Diego!

Congratulations to two of our technicians on there acceptances and commitments to graduate schools right here in Philly:

• Annabel Ferguson to the University of Pennsylvania (CAMB)

• Karl Herbine to Thomas Jefferson University

We have some papers that are almost ready for publication! Preprints from bioRxiv are available at the links below:

• “Cell-intrinsic Wnt4 controls early cDC1 commitment and suppresses development of pathogen-specific Type 2 immunity.”

• “LINGO3 interacts with Trefoil factor 2 to enforce mucosal barrier integrity and drive tissue repair during colitis.”

• “TFF3 is a ligand for LINGO2 that de-represses EGFR to control disease outcome during colitis and gastrointestinal nematode infection.”

Our IGG 3rd Rotation student Sarah Maddux passed her second preliminary examination and will be joining Mike Silverman‘s lab for her thesis project!

Recently Dr. Herbert and Bonnie Douglas traveled to Greece to participate in HYDRA, a meeting focusing on helminths. Bonnie presented her data there and did awesome, GO BONNIE!

Annabel Ferguson, coming from the University of Pittsburgh, has joined the lab as technician!

We have a new member of the lab family! Nicole Maloney Belle and her husband Darien welcomed their first child, a baby boy named Nathan!

Our very own leader, Dr. De’Broski Herbert, along with Dr. Elia Tait Wonjo of Cornell will be organizing the 2019 Woods Hole Immunoparasitology Conference (WHIP). It will be held on April 14-17 and this flyer has a preview: WHIP 2019.

Save the Date Feburary 21-22 2019 for the Type 2 Immunity in Homeostasis and Disease Conference which will be held in Bruges, Belgium! Prorgam details can be found here.

Joon Park will be leaving the lab 🙁 But he is on to bigger and better things as part of Columbia University’s Pathobiology & Molecular Medicine PhD program starting Fall 2018!

Joshua Worth has joined the lab for the summer of 2018 as part of the STEM program. He is a rising high school sophomore at Kamehameha Schools Maui from Hawaii. He is the second summer high school student to come from that state, and the 4th addition to the lab this summer!

Rachel Cohen, a student from Cal Poly, will be our 3rd summer student of 2018. Welcome Rachel!

Nora-Lovette Okwara, a student from Columbia University will be our 2nd summer 2018 addition!

Elizabeth Collins will be researching in the lab for the summer of 2018. She is an NIH-BI scholar and comes from next door as a student in Penn’s Vet program!

Sarah Maddux, a graduate student, has decided to do her 3rd rotation in the Herbert lab!

The 22nd Annual Woods Hole Immunoparasitology Meeting (WHIP) will take place on April 15th-18th 2019.