Saeij LabUC Davis · School of Veterinary Medicine

People

The Saeijentists

Postdocs, graduate students and undergraduates from many countries, and a growing family of alumni in academia, industry and medicine.

Portrait of Jeroen Saeij.

Jeroen Saeij

Principal Investigator · Professor, Department of Pathology, Microbiology & Immunology

Jeroen trained at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, where his PhD with Geert Wiegertjes examined the genetics of carp resistance to blood flagellates, and as a postdoctoral fellow with John Boothroyd at Stanford, where he showed that secreted rhoptry kinases explain strain differences in Toxoplasma virulence and host-cell modulation (Saeij et al., Science 2006; Nature 2007). He started his laboratory at MIT in 2007, received tenure there in 2014, and moved the lab to UC Davis in 2015.

The lab’s focus is how Toxoplasma’s secreted ROP and GRA effectors remodel the host cell, and which host genes determine susceptibility. Genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 loss-of-function screens in the parasite, run in vivo and in naive or interferon-γ-stimulated rat, mouse and human cells, have become the lab’s main discovery engine.

He believes a lab with people from different backgrounds and countries is what keeps research innovative, and works to keep the lab open and inclusive: everyone excited about host–parasite interactions is welcome, regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity, age, physical ability, economic status, nationality or immigration status. Outside the lab he travels and hikes.

Current members

  • Qinli Liang
    Postdoctoral fellow
  • Carol de Moraes de Siqueira
    Postdoctoral fellow
  • Somrita Basu
    Postdoctoral fellow
  • Rodrigue Houngue
    Postdoctoral fellow
  • Stephanie Martinez-Beltran
    Graduate student, Microbiology Graduate Group
  • Raymond Zurich
    Graduate student

Alumni · Postdoctoral fellows

  • Kirk Jensen · Associate Professor, UC Merced
  • Mariane Melo · Director of Translational Research, GreenLight Biosciences
  • Ana Camejo · Global Medical Director, Rare Disease, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals
  • Daniel Gold · Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, St. Edward’s University
  • Musa Hassan · Assistant Professor and Tenure-Track Fellow, University of Edinburgh
  • Cynthia Cordeiro · Ophthalmologist, Campos, Brazil
  • Eleni Konstantinou · Clinical fellow in ocular oncology and medical retina, Wills Eye Hospital
  • Shruthi Krishnamurthy · Business Development and Licensing Manager, Mass General Brigham Innovation
  • Tatiana Paredes-Santos · Scientist, Agilent Technologies
  • Lamba Omar Sangaré · Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University
  • Debanjan Mukhopadhyay · Assistant Professor, Institute of Health Sciences, Presidency University, Kolkata
  • David Arranz-Solís · Fellow, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Complutense University of Madrid
  • Yifan Wang · NIAID K99/R00 awardee; Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan
  • Parag Maru · Specialist in Molecular Biology, Aurigene Pharmaceutical Services
  • Mebratu Bitew
  • Rosalba Cruz Miron

Alumni · Graduate students

  • Emily Rosowski · PhD MIT; postdoc with Anna Huttenlocher, UW–Madison; Assistant Professor, Clemson University
  • Diana Lu · PhD MIT; Managing Partner, Cross River Strategies
  • Kimberly Cirelli · PhD MIT; postdoc with Shane Crotty, La Jolla Institute; Senior Scientist, TScan Therapeutics
  • Wendy Niedelman · PhD MIT; Senior Medical Writer, Vaniam Group
  • Ninghan Yang · PhD MIT; Scientist, Merck
  • Renee McKell · MS MIT; Scientific Project Manager, Nutrafol
  • Benjamin Waldman · Moved to the Lourido lab (Whitehead Institute) when the lab relocated; postdoc with Jan Carette, Stanford
  • Samuel Minot · Moved to the University of Pennsylvania; Scientist, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
  • Pavel Morales · Integrative Pathobiology Graduate Group
  • Felipe Rodriguez · Immunology Graduate Group

Alumni · Undergraduate students

Lauren Rodda (MIT, Amgen Scholar), Stephanie Lin (MIT), Quynh Nguyen (MIT), Oscar Sosa (MIT), Kenneth Hu (MIT, Amgen Scholar), Carolina de la Puente (Amgen Scholar), Kiva McFetridge (Amgen Scholar), Dordaneh Sugano (MIT), Natalle Yu (MIT), Ana Huertas (UC Davis), Maria Navarro Nunez (UC Davis), Carolina Gomez (UC Davis), Alyssa Amezquita (UC Davis)

Alumni · Visiting students

Yiding Wang, Markeiya Polite, Rogier Gaiser, Lara Cornel, Erwan Boedec, Joris Sprokholt, Patricio Barros, Brittany Castagna, Rizwan Muhammad Hafiz, Wing Yan Leung, Laura van Eyndhoven, Tjitse van der Molen