Principal Investigator
Dr. Cameron McAlpine, Associate Professor and Principal Investigator.
Cameron completed his PhD at McMaster University in Canada and pursued his postdoctoral training at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School before starting his independent lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
email: cameron.mcalpine@mssm.edu
Postdoctoral Fellows
Dr. Abi Yates
Dr. Teresa Gerhardt
Teresa has been passionate about the immune mechanisms implicated in cardiovascular diseases ever since she completed her doctoral research at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology in San Diego in 2015. Having obtaining her MD from Albert-Ludwig University Freiburg, Germany, she joined the Charité in Berlin, Germany, as a clinical fellow in cardiology and clinician-scientist in 2019. With the goal to seek out the effects of lifestyle factors on vascular aging, clonal hematopoiesis and atherosclerosis, Teresa joined the McAlpine lab in January 2023.
Dr. Aaron Douglas
Aaron is a postdoctoral research fellow who is particularly interested in neuroimmunology and brain-body interactions. Aaron completed his PhD at the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute in Trinity College Dublin, where he focused on the regulation of adipose tissue circadian rhythms by innate T cells. He then joined the Trinity Neurosciences Institute as a postdoctoral fellow, investing whether memories formed during sickness could activate an anticipatory immune response. Aaron joined the McAlpine lab in February 2025 to further his postdoctoral training, and his work will focus on neuroimmune interactions along the heart-brain axis.
Outside of the lab Aaron enjoys running and keeping active in the gym, while also being an avid gamer.
PhD Students
Annie Khamhoung
Annie is a PhD student in immunology at Mount Sinai. She completed her B.S. in Biochemistry at Northeastern University. Annie worked for several years in biotech as a research assistant developing cancer immunotherapies before beginning graduate school. She is passionate about immunology and looking forward to delving into neuroimmunology and brain-body interactions governed by the immune system. Annie is currently focused on neurodevelopmental diseases. When Annie isn’t in the lab, she enjoys rock-climbing, and spending time in central park.
MD Students
Jake Jacob
Walter “Jake” Jacob is a medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Class of 2025. He completed a B.S. degree in biology from Providence College in Rhode Island where he used a yeast model to interrogate how ER-associated leak channels regulate programmed cell death. He then worked for two years as a postbaccalaureate research fellow at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the NIH where he studied prion proteins and molecular chaperones. Now, as a medical student, his research interests lie at the intersection of different organ systems. He is particularly interested in how sleep modulates hematopoietic stem cell differentiation and how this impacts the subsequent development of atherosclerosis.
Research Associate
Lena Gaebel
Lena is a visiting student, with particular interest in immune cell crosstalk in the context of neurodegeneration. She completed her B.Sc. in Biology in her hometown Hannover, Germany. Currently, she is finishing up her master’s program in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience at Maastricht University, by completing a research internship in the McAlpine lab. Her current research focuses on the role of IL-3 in tauopathy. In her free time Lena enjoys travelling and is thrilled to explore different places in and around New York City in the upcoming months.
Past Members
Agustin Clemente Moragon
Su Goswami
Dr. Jan Hoffman
Merlin Heiser
Pacific Huynh