Nine new faculty join Scripps Research The newly appointed faculty are making transformative discoveries in areas ranging across drug discovery, neuroscience, chemistry, immunity and more.July 08, 2024
LA JOLLA, CA Scripps Research is welcoming eight new scientists who bring their expertise to advance crucial discoveries in human health. They aim to make significant strides in areas including HIV, cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune disorders and much more.
This enormously talented group of scientists brings a diverse array of cutting-edge science to us that will further enrich our community, says Peter Schultz, PhD, President and CEO of Scripps Research. These appointments will lead to exciting collaborations and breakthroughs as we continue to push the frontiers of scientific discovery and innovation in medicine.
Renan V. H. de Carvalho, PhD Immunology & Microbiology, Assistant Professor
De Carvalho is revealing what factors promote long-lived immune responses. In particular, he studies an important component related to the immune system: plasma cells (PCs), the key antibody-producing machines in the body. PCs and antibodies give us protection against a wide variety of infectious diseases, and their induction is the goal of almost every vaccination strategy. Yet, scientists do not know what promotes plasma cell persistence and lingering antibody responses.
At Scripps Research, he aims to find the mechanisms that instruct certain PCs to become long-lived, knowledge which will address a major gap in the understanding of basic immunology. Knowing their longevity properties will ultimately allow manipulation of PCs not only to develop better vaccines against microorganisms and tumors, but also to avoid excessive inflammation and promote homeostasis.
De Carvalho comes to Scripps Research from The Rockefeller University, where, as a postdoctoral research fellow, he focused on longevity of B cell responses and germinal centers. Before that, he conducted doctoral and postdoctoral research at the University of Sao Paulo and received his bachelor's degree from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora.
Christian Diercks, PhD Chemistry, Assistant Professor
Diercks is leveraging his background in both materials chemistry and directed evolution to develop therapeutics and gene delivery vehicles that target specific cell types and tissues.
His lab at Scripps Research will develop systems for the directed evolution of biomacromolecules and nanostructured materials that can selectively target specific tissues, cell types or surface receptors. During his postdoctoral research in the Schultz lab at Scripps Research, he developed a system that accelerates natural evolution of specified genes by up to 100,000-fold. Now, he will use this system to rapidly evolve therapeutic proteins that selectively target or modify cancer-specific glycan determinants sugar sequences on the surface of cells. Differences in these glycosylation patterns are not unique to disease but are also observed between different cell types or tissues of the body. Viruses have evolved to recognize such glycosylation patterns to infect specific cell types or tissues. He aims to target those differences and evolve specialized non-viral gene delivery vehicles for therapeutic applications.
Before his postdoctoral work at Scripps Research, he earned his PhD in Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and received his BS in Chemistry from the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg.
Darrell Irvine, PhD Immunology & Microbiology, Professor
At Scripps Research, Irvine aims to collaborate across immunology, microbiology and other areas to engage with translational science opportunities, particularly around infectious disease and cancer. A major effort of his laboratory at Scripps Research will be directed toward vaccine development for HIV and cancer immunotherapy.
Engineering strategies directed toward problems in cellular immunology can lead to treatments for cancer, infectious diseases and autoimmune conditions. The Irvine lab aims to achieve this by integrating principles from immunology with biotechnology and materials chemistry. Specifically, he applies engineering principles to modulate and empower the immune system in the prevention and treatment of human diseases. For example, his lab is developing synthetic materials (smart materials and nanotechnology) to enhance vaccines against infectious disease and cancer, as well as materials that can help improve anti-tumor immune responses.
Irvine, who is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, was previously a professor at MIT, where he also received his PhD. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Pittsburg.
Ann Kennedy, PhD Neuroscience, Associate Professor
Kennedy studies the underlying neuroscience and brain structures that give rise to fundamental behaviors related to fear, survival and social interactions. By better understanding the neural activities that guide our decision-making and behavior, her work aims to reveal insights about the guiding principles of behavior, as well as what happens in cases of dysfunctions for example, social dysfunction or excessive fear and anxiety.
Her lab at Scripps Research will focus on how the brain learns, makes decisions and works toward goals. In particular, she researches how neural populations represent sensory and internal data by looking at various brain structures, such as the hypothalamus and its role in social and defensive behavior; the basal ganglia's part in influencing certain behaviors; and the hippocampus' activity related to social-bond formation. Using tools from dynamical systems, statistical modeling and machine learning, her lab will reveal key insights into flexible and adaptive behavior control.
Previously, she worked as an assistant profes
