Alumni

Ph.D. Students

Alborz Karimzadeh, Ph.D was a Ph.D. student in the Inlay lab. His main research project focused on the precursor to blood-forming stem cells in embryonic development. He successfully identified a population we called pre-HSCs, that functionally appeared to precede hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in development. He demonstrated this through cell sorting pre-HSCs based on a unique combination of surface markers, then transplanting the sorted cells into neonatal mouse recipients, demonstrating that they could give rise to bone marrow HSCs in the adult animals. Alborz graduated in 2018 and took a post-doctoral research position at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Harvard Medical School.
Ankita Shukla, Ph.D. was a graduate student in the Inlay lab. Her main research focus was on the developmental origins of blood-forming stem cells in embryonic development. She used a lineage tracing system to mark cells derived from extra-embryonic mesoderm (EEM) in mouse embryos, which includes the placenta and yolk sac. Her work provided evidence that some portion of adult HSCs in the bone marrow derive from extra-embryonic tissues. In addition, Ankita identified a novel marker (CD11a) to distinguish microglia in the brain from infiltrating monocyte-derived macrophages. This discovery allows the use of CD11a to distinguish between these cell types in neuroinflammation, such as in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Ankita graduated in 2019 and accepted a position as a field application scientist with Becton Dickenson (BD).
Erika Varady, Ph.D., was a graduate student in the Inlay lab. Her main research focused on the effects on glucocorticoids on blood-forming stem cells and immune cells, and their impact on the safety and efficacy of engraftment after transplantation. Her work demonstrated that glucocorticoid treatment of blood stem cells increased their ability to engraft upon transplantation. Additionally, an immune cell called T lymphocytes was negatively impacted by glucocorticoid treatment, reducing it’s viability. T cells are the main cause of a complication of transplantation known as graft-versus-host disease, and her work demonstrated that by pre-treating donor cells in glucocorticoids prior to transplantation, graft-versus-host disease symptoms and severity were dramatically reduced. Erika graduated in 2021 and took a position as a research scientist at Fate Therapeutics in San Diego, CA.
Tannaz Faal, Ph.D. was a graduate student in the Inlay lab. She worked on a project to develop brain-specific perivascular cells (PCs) from human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines. She developed two different differentiation strategies to make brain PCs, utilizing both a neuroectoderm differentiation protocol, as well as a mesoderm differentiation protocol to create induced PCs. These cells could potentially be paired with iPSC derived endothelial cells and astrocytes to create an in vitro model of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) for studies of the role of the BBB in neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Tannaz successfully defended her thesis in 2018 and joined Kite Pharma as a scientist.
Yasamine Ghorbanian, Ph.D. was a graduate student the Inlay lab. Her research focused on the origins of blood-forming stem cells in embryonic development. Her main research project was to better understand which tissues produced blood-forming stem cells in the embryo that could give rise to HSCs in the adults. To that end, she employed a lineage tracing system to mark the embryonic yolk sac (YS) and showed that yolk sac-derived cells could make up as much as 50% of HSCs in the adults, implicating an important role for the yolk sac in producing embryonic pre-HSCs that could mature into adult HSCs. After graduating in 2019, she took an industry scientist position at Orca Bio in Menlo Park, CA.

Masters Students

Yueyao Li, M.S. was a masters student in the Masters of Science Degree in Biotechnology (MSBT) program at UCI. She worked on a project to test the effect of glucocorticoid treatment of human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) to identify GCs that could negatively impact conventional T lymphocytes, as a potential treatment to prevent graft-versus-host disease (GvHD). Yueyao finished her masters in 2023.
Xiyu Chen, M.S. was a masters student in the Masters of Science in Biotechnology (MSBT) program. She did her masters research in the Inlay lab looking at the expression of the antiapoptotic protein Bcl2 during T cell culture in glucocorticoids, and showed that Bcl2 express decreases during culture. She also examined a Bcl2 overexpressing transgenic mouse and showed that T cells from these mice are able to resist apoptosis caused by glucocortcoid culture, demonstrating a critical role for this protein in the glucocorticoid mediated ablation of T cells that may cause graft-verus-host disease (GvHD). Xiyu received her masters in 2022 and took a position in Aileen Anderson’s lab in the Stem Cell Research Center at UCI.
Artemis Yip, M.S. was a masters student in the Masters of Science Degree in Biotechnology (MSBT) program. Their research focused on analyzing a mouse model of idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), an autoimmune disease of platelets. Artemis characterized a new mouse model developed in the lab called LMOH, and focused on the platelet counts after immunization of the activating antigen that causes ITP in this model. Artemis completed their masters in biotechnology 2022.
Lok Tung “Iris” Wong, M.S. was a masters studnet in the Masters of Science Degree in Biotechnology (MSBT) program. She was the first masters studnet in the Inlay lab. Iris did her masters research on idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), an autoimmune disorder of platelets. Her research involved the first characterization of a novel mouse model of ITP created in the lab. She developed the first tools we used to analyze the mice and their platelets, including testing out antibodies to identify the foreign antigen expressed on platelets, and developing a cell line to test the antibodies on. After graduating in 2021, she was hired by Sorrento Therapeutics in San Diego, CA.
Ankita Daud was a master’s in
biotechnology (MSBT) student and
graduated in 2025. Originally from
Lucknow, India, she earned her
bachelor’s degree in biotechnology
from SRM Institute of Science and
Technology. Her research focused
on immune modulation in
graft-versus-host disease, specifically
investigating the effects of
glucocorticoids and BCL2 inhibitors on
T cell populations using human PBMC
cultures. Outside the lab, she enjoys
reading and journaling and traveling.
Ankita plans to pursue a PhD following
her master’s program.

Undergraduates

Karin Grathwohl, B.S. was an undergraduate student working as the lab manager for the Inlay. She also conducted research as a Bio199 student in the lab under Alborz Karimzadeh. Her main project was to analyze the blood and bone marrow of mice transplanted with HSCs and or pre-HSCs by flow cytometry to measure engraftment levels. Karin graduated in 2018 to pursue a masters degree in occupational therapy at Stanbridge University.
Pauline Nguyen, B.S. was an undergraduate student performing Bio199 research in the Inlay lab. Her project involved investigating glucocorticoid treatment of mouse HSCs to identify compounds that improved the engraftment ability of HSCs. Pauline graduated in 2019 with a B.S. in Pharmaceutical Sciences and took a research associate position in the Flow Cytometry Core of the Stem Cell Research Center at UCI.
Gabby Hisoire, B.S. was an undergraduate researcher and lab manager in the Inlay lab and graduated
with a BS in Biological Sciences in 2025.
Her passion for immunology developed after her own personal experiences with an autoimmune disease. Her research in the lab focuses on culturing T cells in a closed culture system to mimic how bone marrow donor cells are collected in the clinic. She treats these cells with various compounds including glucocorticoids in an effort to reduce GVHD following an allograft. After her time at UCI,
she hopes to further her biological education in graduate school. Apart from lab, she enjoys spending time with her family, dogs, and gecko and she also enjoys going to alternative concerts with her friends.
Cuiwen Zhou, B.S. was a lab manager and undergraduate student at UCI majoring in microbiology and immunology.
She was born and raised in China until the age of 13 when she moved to the US. In the lab, she studies the effects of
glucocorticoids on T cells in vitro. Aside from the lab, she is also highly involved on campus, such as being a general chemistry peer tutor coordinator, learning assistant, volunteering, etc. During her free time, she enjoys watching dramas,
hanging out with family and friends, and learning new languages. Cuiwen graduated in 2024 and is attending dental school at UCSF.

High School

Mia Hsu was a high school student at Orange County School of the Arts. She joined the lab after being accepted to UCI’s Youth Science Fellowship Program that is sponsored by the Cancer Research Institute. The YSFP program is an opportunity for high school students that are looking to do cancer research to be able to participate in real lab experiences. In the lab, she studied the effect of glucocorticoids on T cell viability. During her free time, Mia enjoys drawing, reading webtoons, and going to the dog park with her pets.