Trainees

Joseph Hoffmann, PhD 
Postdoc
Joe Hoffmann joined as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Translational Research in Infection and Inflammation in December 2020. Passionate about infectious disease research, he received his B.S. in biomedical sciences at Maryville University in his hometown, St. Louis Missouri. He then received his PhD in biomedical sciences at Tulane University in 2020. His dissertation research investigated novel antimicrobials and immunotherapeutics as treatments against multidrug resistant gram positive and negative bacterial skin wound infections. Currently under the mentorship of Dr. Jay Kolls and Dr. Janet McCombs, Joe studies the mechanisms of protection in mucosal vaccines against pulmonary Klebsiella pneumoniae infection. He is also developing immunotherapeutics as alternative treatment options in drug-resistant K. pneumoniae infections.

Akhilesh Srivastava, PhD
Postdoc
Dr. Akhilesh Kumar Srivastava received his Doctoral degree in 2014 from All India Institute of Medical Sciences New Delhi under the supervision of Prof. Debabrta Ghosh and Prof. Jayasree Sengupta. After his PhD and he worked for 7 years in many multinational biomedical/life science companies, before joining Prof. Kolls lab his las assignment was with Nektar Therapeutics as Senior Scientist. His current research goal is to develop fusion vaccine and immunotherapy against multidrug resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae.

MST Shamima Khatun
Postdoc

Robert Clark
MD/PhD Student

Thomas "Parks" Remcho
MD/PhD Student
Parks is an MD-PhD Candidate who joined the Kolls lab in 2022. Prior to starting at Tulane, he completed a postbac in parasitology in the Wellems Lab at NIAID and received his bachelor's degree in biochemistry and neuroscience at the University of Virginia where he worked in Deppmann and Landers labs. He is currently working to better understand the mechanisms of a protective immune response in mucosal vaccine models against bacterial pneumonia in the mouse lung. Additionally, he is characterizing how cystic fibrosis influences the mucosal inflammatory landscape.  

Haoran Yang
Biomedical Sciences Graduate Student

Shakhaowat Hossin 
Biomedical Sciences Graduate Student  

Ferris Munyonho
Biomedical Sciences Graduate Student