Lab Alumni

Adarsh Dharan, PhD

Adarsh left lab for tenure track faculty position at Indiana University. Ed was so proud of him, he was able to overcome his tremendous distaste of IU basketball and be happy for him. While here, Adarsh wrecked the model of nuclear import and the staging of HIV-1 infection. Rumor has it he could conjure clones just by imagining them.  Future great PhD mentor who will make great scientists. 

Jessica Mattick, MS

Jess went from lab technician to lab manager to a hero of the western suburbs in a period of 3-4 years, before leaving the Campbell lab for an outstanding opportunity in industry. While in the Campbell lab she was the driver of all informatics in the Campbell lab as well as an amazing cell biologist who helped lead our iPSC team. In the fall of 2020, she was also responsible for allowing a local school district to launch a saliva surveillance program in 10 days, and in the course of that school year, allowed Safeguard Surveiilance to run over 700,000 saliva tests and not a single person went to school the next day without knowing they were negative. No one ever went to school the next day without knowing  becuase Jess made sure we never ran out of tips, plates, or anything else, in the middle of a rosource limited pandemic. So many times, people asked Dr. Campbell "How did you source this?!?!" The answer was Jess! She is a weapon. Went off to crush it at PacBio after the saliva wars.  Thanks for everything  Jess! 

Stephanie Zack PhD

Stephanie's PhD project was unique in that it involved the protein the PI hd never heard of before the student ws showing him the data. Stephanie did a Masters thesis in the lab before staying for her PhD, which is something of a trend. Perhaps that training helped her come up with the hypothesis that VMP1 was regulating cellular inflammatory responses, or maybe she is good at reading papers and thinking about stuff. Either way, Stephanie is a baller, now balling out at UIC as a post-doc where she is publishing papers like she is trying to make a difference in the world. 

Sabrina Imam PhD: 

Sabrina helped us understand how autophagy and ubiquitination govern TRIM5alpha restriction of retroviruses like HIV-1 before returning to medical school in the fall of 2018 as part of the MD/PhD program. When you realize that the kindest person in lab rocks out to gangster rap in the hood, you have really learned something. Sabrina is now an Infectious Disease doc at the University of Chicago. She started there in 2020.  Luckily it was slow that year so Sabrina had time to adjust to being an infectious disease physician. Lucky Her! 

Bill Flavin, PhD: 

Bill studied the cell to cell transmission of alpha-synuclein and other amyloid proteins in neurodegenerative diseases, and his paper is the most cited paper in Campbell Lab history. Bill graduated in the fall of 2017 and is now a neuroscience resident at UCLA. Bill's greatest accomplishment outside of lab was finally beating Ed at Bags at his final lab BBQ while wearing a baby bjorn after 4 years of futility and disappointment. 

Zana Lukic (now Vranic), PhD: 

Zana spread her wings wide on the HIV-1 side of the lab, working on the mechanism of TRIM5alpha restriction as well as being the lab trailblazer in our foray into microtubule trafficking of HIV-1. Zana's ability to deal with obstacles in such a way that you often felt bad for the obstacle and make big plays with great experiments earned her the nickname Z-money. 

David Freeman, MD/PhD: 

Its safe to say Dave demonstrated questionable judgement in wanting to study neurodegenerative diseases in a virology lab. While this decision has aged like fine wine, it started inauspiciously at a Society for Neuroscience poster that almost no one attended and his neighbor called his poster "cute". The next year, his poster went 2 hours longer than scheduled due to overwhelming interest and his first author paper ihas now been citedwell  over 100 times. Dave left for a neurosurgery residency at University of Minnesota, which is one of the longer residencies you can choose. It will end when he is 55. 

Jaya Sastri, PhD:  

Jaya was the first PhD student in Dr. Campbell's lab, and all of that time alone with Dr. Campbell caused irreparable change, that some would describe as damage, to Dr. Sastri. Despite coming into lab an entirely pleasant soul with nothing but kind thoughts, Jaya left the lab as a wise-cracking hell-raiser that revealed previously unimaginable aspects of the Linker-2 region of TRIM5alpha. Jaya left for a post-doc at NIH before taking an industry job to support her gigantic dog.