Personnel

Dr.  Edward (Ted) Kreider is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases. He received his B.A. in Biochemistry and M.S. in Chemistry in 2006 from the University of Pennsylvania as a scholar in the Vagelos Program in the Molecular Life Sciences.  He then matriculated into the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania where he completed his thesis work in the Laboratory of Dr. Beatrice Hahn studying novel pathways of HIV-1 immune evasion from host B and T cell responses. After completing his medical training, he matched into the Internal Medicine residency as a member of the Physician Scientist Pathway (PSP) at Penn and ultimately fast-tracked into Infectious Disease fellowship training. He completed post-doctoral fellowship training in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Dr. Drew Weissman studying HIV vaccine development, mRNA immunotherapy, and targted HIV cure interventions. Dr. Kreider's laboratory focuses on developing novel interventions that shed light on mechanisms of virus transmission and persistence. He continues to see patients in the hospital and enjoys teaching graduate and medical students. 

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Chiaki Noguchi received her Bachelor of Science degree in Food Science from Nakamura Gakuen University in Japan. She began her professional career as a Research Technician in the Department of Molecular Biology (Dr. Katsuyoshi MIhara’s lab) at Kyushu University, Japan, and later at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology (Dr. Paul Russell’s lab) at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California.

She subsequently served as a Laboratory Manager in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (Dr. Eishi Noguchi’s lab) at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, a position she held for over 20 years.

Since April 2025, she serves as Lab Manager for Dr. Edward Kreider. In this role, she is responsible for organizing and manage the day-to-day laboratory operations, ensuring efficient workflow and resource allocation, overseeing purchasing and vendor relations, and supporting ongoing research projects through experimental work.

Dr. Shree Nikhila (Nikki) Tanneti is a Senior Research Investigator. Nikki earned her B.A. in Genetics from Rutgers University where she studied the regulation of chromosome recombination and segregation during meiosis. She then pursued a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Neuroscience from Princeton University. In the lab of her mentor, Dr. Lynn W. Enquist, her thesis focused on identifying virus-host protein interactions that facilitate neuronal transport and spread of Herpesviruses during infection. For her postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania, Nikki joined the lab of Dr. Susan R. Weiss in the Dept. of Microbiology, whose lab focuses on coronavirus infections and the activation of innate immune response, and collaborated closely with the lab of Dr. Noam A. Cohen in the Dept. of Otorhinolaryngology to understand host responses to CoV infections in primary human upper and lower respiratory cultures. Her projects included generating recombinant viruses, investigating CoV replication in primary neuronal cells, characterizing how SARS-CoV-2 variants differ in progression of infection and activation of host innate immune responses in primary respiratory cultures, understanding how respiratory infections differ with age and/or tissue types, and identifying individual genetic risk factors for lethal MERS-CoV infections.

While completing his undergraduate studies in Biochemistry at Rowan University, Ryan studied therapeutics targeting microbial biofilm under Dr. Lark Perez. Upon completion of his B.S., Ryan served three years in the Peace Corps in Zambia where he facilitated community-health programs to mitigate the disease burden of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other infectious diseases. In 2022, Ryan joined the Lab of Dr. Katharine Bar at the University of Pennsylvania as a research specialist where he supported projects on the evolution and fitness of HIV and in vivo development of anti-HIV neutralizing antibodies. In the fall of 2025, Ryan joined the Cell and Molecular Biology Graduate Group as a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania. Ryan’s current research foci lie in expanding mRNA lipid nanoparticle (LNP) platforms eliciting rapid and durable humoral protection against infectious diseases. 

Breezy Brock earned her B.S. in Microbiology from Northern Arizona University in 2022, where she conducted undergraduate research with Dr. Crystal Hepp and Dr. Viacheslav Fofanov, focusing on environmental pathogen surveillance to understand their temporal and geographic spread. Breezy is a fourth-year VMD/PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, where her thesis focuses on developing next-generation mRNA-based HIV vaccine immunogens. Her work involves introducing cytoplasmic tail mutations into a stabilized trimeric Env protein to enhance surface expression and localization to specialized plasma membrane microdomains. This project aims to define how antigen availability and microdomain localization influence B cell precursor priming, with the goal of informing immunogen design strategies for HIV and other complex viruses. 

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Pattadon Sawetpiyakul earned his Bachelor of Science in Biology from Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok, Thailand) in 2025, where he developed a high-throughput platform for screening antivirals against the chikungunya virus as his honors work under the supervision of Dr. Siwaporn Boonyasuppayakorn and Dr. Sittiporn Pattaradilokrat. Following his graduation, Pat was awarded the Queen Sirikit Scholarship for graduate-level study in 2026 by Her Majesty Queen Sirikit, The Queen Mother. Pat used his one-year break to work in Dr. Sita Virakul's group at Chulalongkorn University as a research assistant exploring the implication of acetylation "writer" and "reader" in an autoimmune disease called Graves' ophthalmopathy. 

Robbie Patio is a graduate student in the Immunology Graduate Group at the University of Pennsylvania, co-mentored by Ted Kreider and Cornelius Taabazuing. His research focuses on how persistent viruses evade immune control, with a particular interest in Epstein-Barr virus, innate immune sensing, protein degradation, and cell death. In the lab, he studies EBV reactivation as an immunological decision point: does reactivation expose infected cells to immune clearance, or does the virus actively suppress the pathways that would normally detect and eliminate them? To answer this, he combines viral reactivation systems, synthetic mRNA-based tools, engineered immune sensors, and inflammasome/cell death platforms to identify the host pathways that shape immune recognition during viral persistence. More broadly, Robbie is interested in how persistent viruses rewrite the rules of immune detection and how those rules might be therapeutically reversed. Outside of the lab, he splits his time between training with the Penn Graduate Boxing Team and experimenting with new recipes, using his one semester of culinary school as an excuse to make meals for others.

Sayalee Patankar received her Bachelor’s of Arts in Chemical and Physical Biology, with a minor in Global Health and Health Policy, from Harvard University in 2025. During her undergraduate training, she worked in the lab of Dr. Donald E. Ingber on leveraging epigenetic modifiers as RNA-based therapeutics for influenza and coronaviruses. She later wrote her honor’s thesis under the mentorship of Dr. Lee Rubin, studying the epigenetic effects of the gut on brain aging. As a first-year MD/PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania, Sayalee is working under the guidance of Dr. Edward Kreider to develop protein engineering strategies to change T cell behavior with application to HIV infection and autoimmunity. She hopes to use RNA-based technologies to learn about T cell biology for a broad application to infection, autoimmunity, and cancer.

Adi Jacov earned his B.Sc.Agr in Environmental Economics and Management and Biotechnology from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From 2022 to 2023, he worked as a research scientist at ARO (Volcani Institute), a national agricultural research center, where his work focused on postharvest biology, including calcium‑mediated cell wall stabilization and biochemical mechanisms relevant to tissue integrity and stress responses. In parallel, he conducted molecular biology research in yeast at the Institute of Biochemistry, Food Science and Nutrition, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, focusing on genetic engineering, generation of gene knockouts, and protein expression analysis. During this time, he also completed professional training in Health Tech product management. In 2024, he earned an M.A. in Legal Studies from Bar‑Ilan University, where he also obtained basic mediation certification. In 2025, Adi joined the Weissman Lab at the Penn Institute for RNA Innovation, where he supports RNA‑ and immunology‑focused research using molecular and translational tools.

Amie Albertus received her BS in Biology with a minor in Mathematics from Drexel University in 2016. Her professional experience includes High-Throughput Epitope Mapping at Integral Molecular and Flow Cytometry Analysis and Cell Sorting at the Flow Cytometry Core at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Amie applies the mRNA-LNP platform to HIV vaccine development and HIV cure efforts.

Mary (Marziyeh) Hajialyani joined the University of Pennsylvania in September 2021 as a Research Associate in the Department of Engineering, working in Dr. Haim Bau’s laboratory. Her early research focused on the development of point-of-care devices and microfluidic systems  for the diagnosis of viral diseases such as HCV, HPV, and plant pathogens. She later joined Dr. Vladimir Muzykantov’s lab ( December 2023) and the Targeting Core- Penn Institute for RNA Innovation, where her work centered on the conjugation of targeting moieties to lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) and the development of microfluidic systems for fromulation of LNPs. Marziyeh's current work operates at the interface of microfluidics, nanomedicine, and targeted delivery.

Natalia graduated from the University of Florida in 2023 with a major in Microbiology and Cell Science and a Minor in Pathogenesis. Her undergraduate research focus in the Jones lab focused on understanding the impact of norovirus infection and its interaction with commensal bacteria, specifically on phenotypes regarding bacterial extracellular vesicle production. She was a Penn Post-baccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) Scholar from 2023-2024. During this time, she worked in Dr. Michela Locci's lab to elucidate factors contributing to T Follicular Helper (Tfh) cell differentiation, focusing on the noncanonical T regulatory (Treg) cell to Tfh cell conversion in the gut-draining lymph nodes. She currently works on HIV Vaccine development.

Jess Vasserman recently graduated from Drexel University with a Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences with a minor in Japanese. She is working on HIV Vaccine development.

Nicholas Godwin is a rising Junior at the University of Pennsylvania in the Vagelos Program in Molecular Life Sciences! He is under the supervision of Dr. Edward Kreider and Natalia Perez working on vaccine adjuvants. In his free time, he likes playing the Flute.