Lab Members

Barbara Rehermann received her M.D. degree from Medizinische Hochschule, Hannover, Germany with an experimental doctoral thesis on signal transduction in lymphocyte activation.  She conducted postgraduate clinical training in the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Medizinische Hochschule Hannover, and a research fellowship in the Department of Molecular and Experimental Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, studying the immunopathogenesis of HBV infection.   Since 2004 she is a tenured senior investigator in the Liver Diseases Branch, NIDDK and chief of the Immunology Section.

Ji Hoon Oh received his Ph.D. degree from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea studying virus-induced type I interferon in NK cell-mediated tumor surveillance. His research interest is the regulation of immune responses by the microbiome.

Shahar Azar received his Ph.D. degree from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel studying the endocannaboid system in fatty liver disease. As a postdoctoral fellow he is interested in understanding the effect of microbiota on host metabolism.

Keisuke Fukutomi is a gastroenterologist and hepatologist who received both his M.D. and Ph.D. degree from Osaka University, Japan. At Osaka University, he studied capsid allosteroic modulators and innate immune responses in hepatitis B virus infection. At NIH he is conducting translational studies on immune responses to hepatitis B and D viruses in clinical studies.

Sabitree Shahi received both her master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Okayama University in Japan. Subsequently, she competed for a 2-year JSPS postdoctoral fellowship grant studying plant-microbe interaction at Okayama University. During her graduate studies and postdoctoral fellowship, Dr. Shahi studied the relationship between mycoviruses and their host. At the NIH, she is analyzing the intrahepatic immune response in viral hepatitis.

Dr. Moon Hwa Kwak received her Ph.D. degree from Catholic University, Seoul, Korea for cancer research in mouse models. In her graduate studies, she used phage display to identify cancer cell-binding peptides and validated their cancer-targeting ability through immunofluorescence staining of tumor cell lines and cancer tissue, and through live imaging of mice. At the NIH, she is interested in using intravital imaging techniques to study antitumor responses.

Dr. Oda received M.D. (2013) and Ph.D. (2024) degrees from Okayama University, Japan, where he also worked as a board-certified gastroenterologist. In his graduate studies, he established organoids of gall bladder cancer and identified microRNA-34a-5p as a tumor-suppressive microRNA therapeutic. At the NIH, he is studying the effects of microbiota on immune responses against cancer.

Holly Pringle graduated with a B.A. in Neuroscience from Michigan State University. She gained research experience studying the effect of birth mode on neurodevelopment of mice. At the NIH, Ms. Pringle would like to gain research experience in both translational and basic immunology studying patients with viral hepatitis in clinical protocols.

Current position:
Professor and Chair, Dept. of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endocrinology, Medical School Hannover, Hannover, Germany.

Current position:
Associate Professor, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan.

Current position:
Professeur des écoles, Académie de Paris, Paris, France.

Current position:
Lecturer and attending (academic physician scientist), First Medical Clinic and Policlinic, Johannes-Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany.

Current position:
Internist and Gastroenterologist, Private Praxis, Minden, Germany.

Current position:
Associate Professor, Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, University Hospital Bern, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
Lead Rheumatologist, Insel Gruppe, Bern, Switzerland.

Current position:
Full Professor, Department of Cellular, Computational and Integrative Biology, Center for Medical Sciences - CISMED, University of Trento, Italy.

Current position:
Lecturer and attending (academic physician scientist), Martin-Zeitz Center for Rare Diseases and Center for Internal Medicine, First Medical Clinic, University Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany.

Current position:
Director, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Shin-Yurigaoka General Hospital, Kawasaki, Japan.

Current position:
Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology, Ewha Womans University School of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Current position:
Professor, Graduate School of Medical Science & Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Republic of Korea.
Director, The Center for Viral Immunology, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Daejeon, Republic of Korea.

Current position:
Professor and Chair of Medicine, Blacktown Mount Druitt Hospitals with Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia.

Current position:
Attending, Gynecological Endocrinology and Reproduction Medicine, University of Cologne, Germany.

Current position:
Associate Professor, Department of Life Sciences, School of Natural Sciences, Shiv Nadar University, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Current position:
Scientific Writer, Cactus Communications, Mumbai, India.

Current position:
Research Associate, Translational Immuomics in Hematological Neoplasms Research, University de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain.

Current position:
Professor, Translational Liver Immunology, Department of Surgery, University Hospital Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.

Current position:
Professor, Graduate School of Medical Science & Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Current position:
Research Fellow, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Melbourne, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Melbourne, Australia.

Current position:
Associate Director, Vaccines and Prevention, US Military HIV Research Program at WRAIR.

Current position:
Program Director, Division of Skin and Rheumatic Diseases, NIAMS, NIH, Bethesda, MD.

Current position:
Clinical Fellow, Hematology/Oncology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.

Current position:
Full Professor and Head, Department of Microbiome Research, University Hospital Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.

Current position:
Clinical fellow and research group leader, Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endocrinology, Medizinische Hochschule Hannover, Germany.

Current position:
Lecturer and Attending (academic physician scientist), Clinic for Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Essen University Hospital, Essen, Germany.

Current position:
Instructor, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka, Japan.

Current position:
Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Medical Science & Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Republic of Korea.

Current position:
Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Medical and Dental Services, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan.

Current Position:
Physician Scientist, Department of Gastroenterology, Nagoya University, Japan.

Current position:
Professor, Head of the Department of Gastroenterology and Diabetology, GRN-Klinik Weinheim, Germany.

Current position:
Professor of Medicine, Boston University, Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Boston, MA.

Next position:
Yerby Postdoctoral Fellow, Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA.

Current position:
Professor, Pathology, Stanford Health Care, Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.

Current position:
Pastor of Discipleship, Trinity Fellowship, Kansas City, KS.

Current position:
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Duke University, Durham, NC.

Current position:
Associate Professor, Genetics and Molecular Biology, Millersville University, PA.

Current position:
Medical Manager Oncology, Daiichi Sankyo Germany, Jena, Germany.

Current position:
Director, Biomarkers – Late-Stage ADC Development, Pfizer, Chicago, IL.

Current position:
Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA.

Current position:
Vitreoretinal Surgery Fellow, Ophthalmology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.

Current position:
Hematopathology Fellow, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Dallas, TX.

Current position:
Instructor in Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.

Current position:
Family Medicine Physician, Strasburg, CO.

Current position:
Resident, Internal Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.

Current position:
Medical Writer at Costello Medical, Cambridge, MA.

Current position:
Resident, Neurology, Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education, Rochester, MI.

Next position:
Student, Department of Biology, Utah State University, Logan, UT.

Current position:
Gastroenterology and Hepatology Fellow, Cornell University, New York, NY.

Current position:
Medical Student, University of Colorado, School of Medicine, Aurora, CO.

Current position:
Gastroenterology and Hepatology Fellow, Cornell University, New York, NY.

Current position:
Psychiatrist, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY.

Current position:
Medical Student, Liberty University College of Osteopathic Medicine, Lynchburg, VA.

Current position:
Graduate Student, Microbiology, Immunology, and Cancer Biology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.

Current position:
Medical Intern, New York University Grossman Long Island School of Medicine, New York, NY.

Current position:
Medical Student, Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, Chicago, IL.

Current position:
Medical Student, Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA.

Current position:
Graduate Student in Bioinformatics Data Science, University of Delaware, Newark, DE.

Current Position:
Postbaccalaureate IRTA Fellow, NIH Clinical Center.