Welcome to the Fowell Lab
at Cornell University

Welcome to our former collaborator Anna Kolarzyk, PhD, now Postdoctoral Associate!

The lab flew out to sunny Honolulu, Hawaii for IMMUNOLOGY2025, the annual meeting organized by AAI. Marinel Ocasio-Rivera presented a poster, and Xiang Yang, Tiago Zilch, and Evan Carter gave podium presentations on their research.

Congratulations to Xiang Yang, Tiago Zilch, and Evan Carter, all AAI Trainee Abstract Award winners! Their abstracts were selected for podium presentations in Block Symposia at IMMUNOLOGY2025, hosted by The American Association of Immunologists.

Congratulations and farewell to Noor Bala! Dr. Bala is heading to San Francisco for her new position as Scientist 3 at Genentech.
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Brenda Lizbeth Ramos Villanueva has officially joined the lab as our newest graduate student! We're excited to have her stay on after her rotation.

Welcome rotation students Rui Su and Brenda Lizbeth Ramos Villanueva! They join us from Cornell's BMCB and BBS programs respectively.

Congratulations to Noor Bala for successfully defending her dissertation and earning her doctorate! Noor is our first student to complete a B-exam since the lab moved to Cornell. We are so proud and excited to see what Dr. Bala does next!

Check out the lab's recent preprint by co-first authors Noor Bala and Alex McGurk, with support from Scott Leddon and Evan Carter, titled "Th1 cells are critical tissue organizers of myeloid-rich perivascular activation niches":
https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.11.24.625073

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Welcome AdePeju Oshodi, our newest rotation student from the BBS program!

Welcome BBS student Ana Alice Pimenta Pereira, DVM, our first rotation student of the fall semester!

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The lab joined researchers from Weill Cornell, Cornell Ithaca, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and Hospital for Special Surgery for engaging scientific discussions and fun social events at the annual Immunology & Microbial Pathogenesis (IMP) Retreat.

The Fowell Lab continues it's reign as co-champion of the M&I Department Picnic Cornhole Tournament thanks to Tiago Zilch and Alex McGurk.

Welcome (back) Francesca Byun, our newest lab member! Francesca is a PhD student from the BBS program; she spent her second rotation with us last winter. We're excited to have her back in the lab!

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Dr. Fowell gave a talk on the lab's research into integrin and chemokine receptor modulation in inflamed tissue at the Chemotactic Cytokines Gordon Research Conference held in Portland, Maine.

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Noor Bala, Tiago Zilch, Alex McGurk, and Marinel Ocasio-Rivera presented research posters at the Cornell Immunology Symposium hosted by the Cornell Center for Immunology. The biennial meeting brings researchers together from the Ithaca campus and Weill Cornell Medicine in NYC to discuss exciting new research and foster intercampus collaboration. Congratulations to Tiago for placing 2nd in the 3-minute Thesis Competition!

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Welcome BBS student Nnamdi Ikeogu, DVM, who will spend his last rotation with us this summer!

Congratulations and farewell to our graduating undergraduate researchers, Lwiza AitDowd and Pamela Perez! Lwiza is headed to Boston Children's Hospital as a Research Assistant, and Pam will be a Clinical Research Coordinator at MGH. We wish them the best of luck in these exciting new roles.

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Congratulations to our technician Evan Carter for earning his master's degree in biology from Harvard University Extension School!

The lab caught a glimpse of the total solar eclipse through the clouds from Dr. Fowell's backyard in Rochester, NY.

Welcome BBS students Ziehyun Shim and Katelyn Raney, who will spend the spring with us for their third rotations!

Alex McGurk gave a short talk at the Keystone symposium Myeloid Cell Diversity: From Fundamental Biology to Disease States in Banff, Canada.

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Noor Bala, Evan Carter, and Marinel Ocasio-Rivera traveled to Pacific Grove, California to present their research posters at the 62nd Midwinter Conference of Immunologists at Asilomar.

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Happy New Year from the Fowell Lab!

Congratulations to Alex McGurk for winning a scholarship from the Keystone Symposia scholarship program! Alex will present his work at Myeloid Cell Diversity: From Fundamental Biology to Disease States hosted by Keystone early next month.

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Congratulations to Noor Bala for winning a 2024 MCI Trainee Travel Award! Noor's abstract was selected from abstracts submitted for the Midwinter Conference of Immunologists this coming January.

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We all brought in treats for our second annual Cookie Exchange to celebrate the past year of research. Happy Holidays!

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Welcome BBS students Francesca Byun and Nick Vazquez, who will spend the next few months with us for their second rotations!

Welcome Xiang Yang, MD/PhD, our first Postdoctoral Associate at Cornell!

Graduate students from our lab and others across the Ithaca campus joined trainees and mentors from Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan-Kettering for the annual Weill Immunology & Microbial Pathogenesis (IMP) Retreat. This reunion serves as a space to exchange ideas and present on the diverse scientific research conducted at these interconnected institutions.

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Dr. Fowell presented at the 25th Annual Upstate New York Immunology Conference (NYIC) in Cooperstown, New York.

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Farewell and good luck to laboratory technician Dan Netti, now at Quadrant Biosciences as a Laboratory Analyst.

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Welcome Caleb Goillandeau, our newest undergraduate student researcher.

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Tiago Zilch presented his research on Tfh and germinal centers at the T and B Cell Collaboration in Germinal Centers and Beyond symposium hosted by Keystone in Whistler, Canada.

Marinel Ocasio-Rivera represented Cornell University during Ivy+ Puerto Rico, through which Cornell and other top U.S. research universities work together to recruit undergraduate students for master’s and doctoral programs, with the goal of increasing diversity in higher education.

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Welcome Rucha Deo and Anastasia Rup, our first BBS rotation students of the academic year!

Congratulations to Dr. Fowell for receiving the prestigious NIH MERIT Award! Only a select few researchers receive the award each year, which is reserved for investigators with especially strong records of research accomplishment. Read more about Dr. Fowell's plans for the award in this article from the College of Veterinary Medicine:  

→ https://www.vet.cornell.edu/news/dr-deborah-fowell-awarded-nih-merit-grant

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The lab attended the 22nd Annual Biomedical & Biological Sciences (BBS) Symposium in the College of Veterinary Medicine, where first-year PhD students were introduced to the variety of research in Cornell BBS. Second-year students donned lab coats in a ceremony recognizing their transition into research labs as official mentees, and our PhD candidates Noor Bala, Alex McGurk, and Tiago Zilch presented research posters.

Our recent collaboration with the White Lab is now published, check it out in Cancer Research:

→ https://doi.org/10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-22-2841

Check out this recent publication from the Geha Lab at Boston Children's Hospital, featuring our very own Alex McGurk as second author:

→ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaci.2023.05.025

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Congratulations to Alex McGurk, now PhD candidate, for passing your A-exam!

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Welcome (back) Marinel Ocasio-Rivera, our newest PhD student from the BBS program! Marinel spent her first rotation with us during the 2022 Fall Semester, and we're happy to have her join the lab officially as a graduate student.

Congratulations and farewell to Nuzat Zaman, our graduating undergraduate researcher. Good luck at the Broad Institute!

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Congratulations and good luck to PhD candidate Noor Bala and undergraduate Lwiza AitDowd on their summer internships! Lwiza is off to AbbVie, while Noor is interning in Precision Medicine at Regeneron.

Thanks to all in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology who attended our second TGIF Sushi Social, it was a great opportunity to catch up with everyone.

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Dr. Fowell presented at the Cold Spring Harbor Systems Immunology meeting, which brought system biologists and immunologists together to share their diverse research on the organization, functions, and regulation of the immune system across experimental, computational, and mathematical disciplines.

We held our (very belated) celebratory New Year's dinner at Coltivare in downtown Ithaca. The white elephant gift exchange was great fun, and it was wonderful to catch up with the partners and spouses who joined us.

Congratulations to Anastasia Rup for her acceptance into the Biomedical & Biological Sciences PhD Program here at Cornell!

We are actively seeking postdocs interested in studying the mechanisms of CD4 effector function, with open positions in Immunology, Bioinformatics, Computational biology, or In vivo imaging. See our Academic Jobs Online posting here.

We had our first annual Cookie Exchange in lab to celebrate the past year of research. Happy Holidays!

Congratulations to Marinel Ocasio-Rivera for completing her rotation project! This was her first rotation in BBS, and we wish her the best for her future placements.

Welcome Daniel Netti, a new technician in the lab.

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Congratulations to Tiago Zilch for winning an AAI/NYIC Young Investigator Award! He received the award for his research presented at NYIC. 

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The lab visited Cooperstown, New York for the 24th Annual Upstate New York Immunology Conference (NYIC). Tiago Zilch was selected for a poster talk, and Anastasia Rup and Evan Carter jointly presented a poster.

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Welcome Pamela Perez, our newest undergraduate student researcher.

The lab attended the Cornell Immunogenomics Symposium hosted by the Center for Immunology, the Center for Vertebrate Genomics, and the Provost's Genome Biology Task Force. We enjoyed a number of talks from leading researchers in genomic immunology, gene editing, gut microbiome studies, and bioinformatics. Evan Carter and Anastasia Rup jointly presented a poster.

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Thanks to all the students, staff, and faculty who came to the lab's Sushi Social, our take on the biweekly TGIF event held in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology. It was a nice afternoon of socializing and rest to start the weekend.

The lab attended the 21st Annual Biomedical & Biological Sciences (BBS) Symposium in the College of Veterinary Medicine, organized in part by our very own Tiago Zilch. Noor Bala, Alex McGurk, Anastasia Rup, Evan Carter, and Tiago exhibited posters at the end of the day, where first-year PhD students had the chance to sample research done in the BBS program.

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We had a celebratory lunch outing in Collegetown for Lwiza AitDowd and Nuzat Zaman, our undergraduate researchers. Congratulations and thank you for your hard work this summer!

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The lab attended the CCFI/CIHMID Research Symposium at Cornell University, where our undergraduates Lwiza AitDowd and Nuzat Zaman presented posters on their summer research projects. Anastasia Rup and Evan Carter also presented during the poster session.

Congratulations to Tiago Zilch, now PhD Candidate, for passing your A-exam!

Noor Bala and Dr. Fowell both gave talks at Chemotactic Cytokines, a Gordon Research Conference (GRC) held in Les Diablerets, Switzerland.

The lab flew out to Portland, Oregon for IMMUNOLOGY2022, the annual meeting organized by AAI. Noor Bala and Tiago Zilch both presented posters. Noor also gave a podium presentation on her research during the Lymphocyte Homeostasis and Regulation symposium.

Dr. Fowell gave the first talk of the 2nd Intercampus Immunology Symposium held at Cornell Tech in New York City, where Tiago Zilch, Anastasia Rup, and Evan Carter presented posters. The meeting brought together researchers from the Cornell Ithaca campus and Weill Cornell Medicine to establish collaborations and share their work on imaging, tissue immunity, immunogenomics, and the microbiome.

The lab attended the 2022 CIHMID/CCFI Research Symposium on campus at Cornell University, where Alex McGurk and Tiago Zilch presented posters, and we heard a number of great talks from trainees and faculty.

Congratulations to Lwiza AitDowd and Nuzat Zaman for their acceptance into the CIHMID Undergraduate Research Experience Program!

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Congratulations Noor Bala for winning an AAI Trainee Abstract Award! Her abstract has been selected for oral presentation in Block Symposia at IMMUNOLOGY2022, hosted by The American Association of Immunologists.

Welcome Lwiza AitDowd, Shiveen Kumar, and Nuzat Zaman, our new undergraduate student researchers!

We had a lovely holiday dinner out at The Heights to celebrate the end of the year. Thank you to the spouses and partners in attendance, it was wonderful to meet and catch up with you all.

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Check out the lab’s recent review on T cell activation niches for Immunological Reviews:

→ https://doi.org/10.1111/imr.13047

Congrats Noor Bala for winning an AAI NYIC Young Investigator Award! She received the award after giving her poster talk at NYIC in Cooperstown, New York. 

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Lab off to the 23rd Annual Upstate New York Immunology Conference (NYIC) – Cooperstown here we come.

Welcome Anastasia Rup, Technician, to the lab!

Hen Prizant’s perivascular activation niche paper is now out in Cell Reports. Congrats to all those who contributed:

→ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109523

Congrats Noor Bala on passing your A exam. Awesome job!

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Check out Dr. Fowell’s review on spatio-temporal control of effector T cell migration:

→ https://doi.org/10.1038/s41577-021-00507-0

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Farewell Alex Iankoulska. Good luck in grad school!

Welcome Tiago Zilch to the lab as a new grad student from the Biomedical & Biological Sciences PhD Program.

Welcome Evan Moss Carter, our new Technician, to the lab!

​Congratulations Hen Prizant on your new Scientist position in the Oncology Biomarker Development, Cancer Immunotherapy group at Genentech. You’re going to do great things.

The Fowell Lab arrives at Cornell. Thanks to the grad students who came with me on this journey, Noor Bala and Alex McGurk. Huge thanks to Scott Leddon, Senior Research Associate for making this move possible and for setting up the lab.