2019 Undergraduate Summer Research Program Participant

Home Department: Chemical Engineering
Mentor: Michael Angelo, Pathology

Despite its large global burden, the human immune response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis remains poorly characterized. Tuberculosis (TB) infection results in the formation of organized immune cell aggregates, known as granulomas, at the site of infection in both clinically latent and active disease. Utilizing multiplexed ion beam imaging and computational methods for single cell analyses, Alea aims to elucidate the composition and structure of these granulomas in order to describe key immune differences distinguishing active TB from latent TB, which can lay a foundation for novel vaccine platforms and host-directed immunotherapies.