Our People
The Roybal Lab is a dedicated group of students, post-docs, physicians, and staff scientists with diverse backgrounds ranging from basic science to cellular engineering and synthetic immunology. Each member brings expertise in their field to our unique and highly collaborative research environment. We are now hiring, all positions! More info below.
Kole T. Roybal, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, University of California, San Francisco, Investigator – Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, Investigator – Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center
Dr. Roybal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California, San Francisco. He received his doctorate in Immunology from UT Southwestern Medical Center and was a Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Wendell A. Lim at UCSF and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is currently a member of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, and an inaugural Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. He is also the Deputy Director of the UCSF Center for Synthetic Immunology recently funded by the Cancer Moonshot Initiative. He was awarded the Sartorius and Science Magazine Prize for Regenerative Medicine and Cell Therapy and the NIH New Innovator Award in 2018.

Postdoctoral Fellows

Panagiotis “Panos” Christopoulos, Ph.D.
Visiting Scholar

Jay Daniels, P.h.D
Postdoctoral Fellow

Daniel B. Goodman, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Raymond Liu, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Joseph Muldoon, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Dan I. Piraner, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Jaehoon Shin, M.D., Ph.D.
Resident
Staff Scientists

Clarity Chua
Junior Specialist

Maria Jose Duran
Junior Specialist

Garrett Montgomery, M.S.
Lab Manager, Assistant Specialist III

Nate Perry, M.S.
Staff Research Associate II

Chloe Thienpont
Asistant Specialist
Students

Casey Burnett
PhD Student

Max Foisey
PhD Student

Julie Garcia
PhD Student

Alyssa Indart
PhD Student
Alumni

Josef Alavi
Staff Research Associate

Camillia Azimi
PhD Student

Maria Chirinos
Summer Intern

Kiavash Garakani
Staff Scientist

Axel Hyrenius-Wittsten, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Kendall Kearns
Staff Scientist

Emily Park
Staff Scientist

Pavithran Ravindran
Staff Scientist

Iowis Zhu Ph.D.
MD/PhD Student
Interested in joining the Roybal Lab?
The Roybal Lab is always seeking highly motivated graduate students, postdocs, and staff scientists to work on engineering the immune cell therapies of the future. Please email your CV including references and a brief statement of your interest to the email address below.
Potential Projects
- Engineering next generation T cell therapies for treatment of Glioblastoma.
- Engineering new Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CARs) with novel signaling capabilities.
- Engineering cell therapies for autoimmunity: boosting the functional capacity of regulatory T cells and generation of synthetic regulatory T cells.
- Systematic modulation of tumor microenvironments with engineered immune cells to find the Achilles’ heels of solid tumors.
- Engineering synthetic immune cell interactions to develop new cellular communication systems to improve cell therapies.
Job Openings
The Roybal lab is looking for Postdocs and Staff Scientist to join our team! We are starting a number of new and exciting synthetic biology and cell therapy projects that you can be a part of. Things are moving fast, please get in touch with us by emailing your CV, including references and a brief statement of interest.