Past Members

Spoorthi Balu, BA

Spoorthi graduated from Barnard College in 2021 with a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and a minor in Art History. While at Barnard, she completed an honors thesis studying the interaction of proteins implicated in Alzheimer’s disease. She started working with Dr. Chang as a student in 2018 to identify tissue resident memory T cells in synovium samples from patients with rheumatoid arthritis using multispectral microscopy techniques. She then worked on characterizing immune cells in the ocular fluid of patients with autoimmune uveitis. Spoorthi left the Chang lab in 2023 to pursue medical school at UMass T.H. Chan School of Medicine.

Research Assistant

Chang MH*, Levescot A*, Nelson-Maney N, Blaustein RB, Winden KD, Morris A, Wactor A, Balu S, Grieshaber-Bouyer R, Wei K, Henderson LA, Iwakura Y, Clark RA, Rao DA, Fuhlbrigge RC, Nigrovic PA. Arthritis Flares Mediated by Tissue Resident Memory T Cells in the Joint. Cell Rep. 2021 Oct 26;37(4):109902. PMID 34706228.

Publications

Awards

  • Joint Biology Consortium Microgrant Award 2023

Lillie Sutton

Lillie is a senior at Wake Forest University, pursuing her Bachelor's of Science in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and minoring in Neuroscience. Her previous research at Wake Forest's School of Medicine focused on macrophage activation in adipose tissues of rodent models of obesity. She joined the Chang lab to study treatment approaches to refractory noninfectious uveitis.

Summer Intern

Awards

  • Guy T. Carswell Scholar

  • Leadership and Character Scholar