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.