2017 North Texas Flow Cytometry Conference

Holden Maecker, Ph.D.

Holden Maecker is the Director of the Human Immune Monitoring Center at Stanford University. His research is focused on cellular immune responses to pathogens, and the correlation of those responses with protection from clinical disease. Most of his work and collaborations involve multicolor flow cytometry for immune monitoring of diseases like cytomegalovirus (CMV), HIV, and cancer. His research is focused on determining immune correlates of protection for such diseases, where cellular immunity is important which would enable better vaccine development and monitoring of individuals undergoing immunotherapy.

Brian McFarlin, Ph.D.

Brian McFarlin earned his Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology from Purdue University in 2003. Following a postdoctoral fellowship in Nutrition at Purdue University, Dr. McFarlin joined the University of Houston faculty in the Fall 2004. McFarlin’s research focuses on two main areas: 1) the physiological and immunologic consequences of weight gain and loss; and 2) the use of nutritional countermeasures to maximize immune health after exercise. His research expertise includes flow cytometry and multiplex analysis among other common biological measurement techniques. 

Elena Piskounova, Ph.D.

Elena Piskounova earned her Ph.D. in biomedical sciences from Harvard Medical School. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern, Dr. Piskounova accepted a position at Weill Cornell Medicine as an assistant professor. Her research focus includes finding novel metabolic pathways that are specific to metastasizing cells to ultimately create novel therapeutic opportunities to target metastatic disease across different cancers.

Kara Nihan, PhD

Kara Nihan earned her Ph.D. at Stony Brook University in Dr. Bruce Stillman’s laboratory in molecular and cellular biology. After completing her postdoctoral fellowship at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Dr. Nihan worked for a biotechnology company in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since then, Dr. Nihan has spent the last year working as a senior scientist in applications development at the global medical technology company BD.

Yu-Chieh Wang, Ph.D.

Yu-Chieh Wang received his bachelor’s degree in biology from National Taiwan Normal University and doctoral degree in medicinal chemistry and pharmacognosy from the Ohio State University. Prior to joining UNTHSC, he was a Senior Research Associate at the Scripps Research Institute and led several studies at the interface between cancer and stem cell biology to understand the molecular regulation of cellular pluripotency. At UNTHSC Dr. Wang serves as an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences. His primary research focus is translational medicine. He aims to understand the molecular basis for cellular pluripotency and malignancy, and to develop better therapeutic strategies for managing human diseases.