Lab Members
Alice Cheng
Assistant Professor
I am a Gastroenterologist and Research scientist. I trained at UChicago medical and graduate school, completed internal medical residency at MGH, gastroenterology fellowship at UCSF followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford Bioengineering. In my laboratory at UChicago, my mission is to use synthetic communities to discover and understand microbiome phenotypes, to help trainees excel in the place I trained, and to give back to the Hyde Park community. Come join us in our scientific adventures!
Jazib Shafiq
Postdoctoral Scholar
Jazib hails from Karachi Pakistan where he completed his PhD studies at the International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences at the University of Karachi. During his time there he studied the role of gut microbial communities in the modulation of CNS serotonin levels and anxiety-like behaviors. Here, he will be diving into colonization resistance against gut pathogens in relation to microbial communities and metabolites. In his free time, he enjoys reading literature from distinct cultures and traveling the world.
Maria (Masha) Shapiro
Research Associate
Masha is a California native and a graduate of UC Santa Barbara. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Biology and Minor in Professional Writing: Science Communication.
Cristian Borges
Research Associate
Cristian is from the Southeast side of Chicago and recently graduated from Lewis University with a B.S in Biochemistry.
Sean Sullivan
Graduate Student
Sean is a Microbiology PhD candidate and a NSF Graduate Research Fellow. Sean is from Massachusetts and completed his undergraduate studies at Amherst. He is currently interested in understanding how diet can be used to indirectly modify microbiome ecology and developing tools to better model these complex dynamics. Beyond the bench, he is passionate about science outreach/communication, making research more accessible to a broad audience and helping retain young students in STEM.