Maria Curotto de Lafaille, PhD

Principal Investigator

Maria Lafaille is a Professor and Principal Investigator of Pediatrics, Immunology and Immunotherapy, and a member of the Jaffe Food Allergy and the Precision Immunology Institutes at Mount Sinai. She obtained her PhD degree in Immunology from the University of São Paulo in Brazil and received her postdoctoral training at Harvard University. Dr. Lafaille made groundbreaking contributions to the fields of mucosal tolerance and allergic sensitization. The main interests of her laboratory are the mechanisms of B cell memory in mice and human allergy, and the immunopathology of chronic allergic inflammation.

Mariana Waldetario, PhD

Associate Scientist

Mariana is an associate scientist from Brazil. She obtained her PhD in Immunology from the University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte. In her doctoral work, she characterized the changes in the intestinal immune system that take place during the onset of type 1 diabetes in mice. She is currently working on the transcriptional and metabolic features that defines IgE plasma cells biology and its particular generation dynamics.

Yolanda Garcia-Carmona, PhD

Research Instructor

Yolanda’s main interests are B-cell biology and immune-related diseases. She earned her PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), where she investigated the role of B cells in rheumatoid arthritis. She completed her postdoctoral training in the Division of Clinical Immunology at Mount Sinai, specializing in Inborn Errors of Immunity. Since joining Dr. Lafaille’s laboratory, her research has focused on the role of B cells in shaping the immune landscape of allergic diseases to understand immune dysregulation and develop novel therapeutic strategies.

Weslley Fernandes Braga, PhD

Posdoctoral Fellow

Weslley earned his PhD in Biochemistry and Immunology from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil), where he also completed two years of postdoctoral training in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics. His research interests span inflammatory, metabolic, and allergic diseases, with a particular focus on B-cell biology, antibody responses, and immune memory. His current work investigates the cellular and molecular mechanisms that drive the persistence or resolution of food allergy.

Isabella graduated from the Biomedical Sciences program at Mount Sinai. She received her Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences from Cornell University, where her research focused on characterizing IL-10-producing T cell populations in mouse models of severe influenza infection. Isabella's research interests lie in autoinflammatory diseases and immunological memory and tolerance. Her master's thesis focuses on characterizing memory B cell populations associated with persistent peanut allergy in pediatric patients. 

Isabella Ciocca, MS

Research volunteers

Josephine C. Schizer

Josephine graduated from Harvard with a Bachelor's degree in Neuroscience in May 2025. Now, she is a student in the Columbia Premed Postbac program.

Maya Abdelaziz

Maya is a rising senior studying Biology at Hunter College. Her research interests include the oral microbiome and regenerative medicine. Maya would like to pursue a career as a dentist-scientist focused on advancing oral health through research.

Alumni

Ankita Prakash, PhD Student, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ

Bruna Grazzi, Professor, Universidade Federal do Pampa, Campus Uruguaiana, Brazil

Carlos Aranda, Professor, Department of Física Teórica y del Cosmos, Universidad de Granada, Spain

Edenil Costa Aguilar, Postdoctoral fellow, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil

Emma Agudelo, Master’s Student, Radboud University, Netherland

Erica Ma, Senior Scientist, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Tarrytown, NY

Ishwar Navin, Postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, Baylor College of Medicine, Huston, TX

Jaime Redes, Biomedical Writer, Cadent, New York, NY

Jinshu He, Technologist Specialist, Center for Therapeutic Discovery, Australia National University

Lakshmi Ramakrishna, Assistant Director, Translational Immunology Institute, SingHealth-Duke-NUS, Singapore

Laura Xie, PhD Student University of Chicago, IL

Leigh Jones, Regional Academic Training Leader, Oxford University Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health, Vietnam and Thailand Units

Maya Ramachandran, Research Scientist, New York University Langone Health, New York, NY

Miyo Ota, Senior Scientist, Scripps Research Institute, San Diego, CA

Paulo Schenkel, Professor, Universidade de Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Pedro Silva, Research Scientist, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY

Roman Gailleton, Postdoctoral fellow, University of Gothenburg, Sweden 

Sara Friedman, MD Student, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, NY

Sean Saunders, Life Science Consultant, L.E.K. Consulting, New York, NY

Sharrada Subramanian, Assistant Director of Business Development and Alliance Management, Hilleman Laboratories, Singapore

Sriram Narayanan, Senior Scientist, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, ASTAR, Singapore

Victor de Vries, Senior Researcher, Tessa Therapeutics, Singapore

WenQi Ho, Director of Investments and New Ventures at ClavystBio, Singapore