Rob Barnes
BME Postdoctoral Researcher
UVA BME Ph.D. student (Fall 2020- Summer 2025)
UVA Cancer Center Trainee Fellow (2022-2023)
Rob is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME). He received his Ph.D. in BME in July 2025. His thesis work in the Dolatshahi Lab was titled “Systems Biology Approaches to Improving Immunotherapeutic Outcomes in Solid Tumors“.
Rob grew up in Atlanta, GA and Nashville, TN, and graduated from University of Georgia in Athens, GA in 2015 with a major in Biochemical Engineering.
Prior to joining UVA, Rob worked for Juno Therapeutics in Seattle, WA as a process engineer. He was a member of the Viral Vector Process Development team and helped design adherent and suspension lentiviral production processes for use in CAR-T therapies.
Rob’s research focuses on immune cell behaviors in solid tumors. His work explores how the tumor microenvironment changes T cell and macrophage interactions with targeted immunotherapies. His approach integrates single-cell transcriptomic analysis, mechanistic modeling, and genetic engineering to better understand cell-drug interactions. His projects have included an investigation into the dynamics of T cell inhibitory receptor expression, glycosylation-driven interference in macrophage-antibody interactions, and mechanisms of tertiary lymphoid structure development by cancer-associated fibroblasts.
As a postdoc, Rob is working on furthering our understanding of macrophage glycosylation on antibody binding. He hopes to use his findings to better design antibodies to initiate immune reactions in solid tumors. Additionally, he is applying his expertise to help build models of antibody transfer across the placenta.
Outside of lab, Rob spends most of his time skiing, fly fishing, and, when possible, scuba diving.