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 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.

Mariana Waldetario, PhD

Associate Scientist

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.

Yolanda Garcia-Carmona, PhD

Research Instructor

Isabella is a Masters Candidate in the Biomedical Sciences program at Mount Sinai. Isabella 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 current work focuses on characterizing memory B cell populations that are associated with persistent peanut allergy in pediatric patients. 

Isabella Ciocca

Master Candidate

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.

Weslley Fernandes Braga, PhD

Posdoctoral Fellow

Alumni

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

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

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

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

Laura Xie, PhD Student University of Chicago, IL

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

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

Roman Gailleton, Postdoctoral fellow, University of Gothenburg, Sweden 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Victor de Vries, Senior Researcher, Tessa Therapeutics, Singapore