Dolatshahi Systems Immunology Lab

Headshot of Dr. Dolatshahi in front of a brick wall.

Sepideh Dolatshahi, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering

University of Virginia, School of Medicine

Core member of UVA Cancer Center

Member of UVA Carter Immunology Center

Principal Investigator

Bio

  • Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering 2020-present

  • Post-Doc Biological Engineering, MIT and MGH 2016-2019

  • Ph.D. Electrical Engineering, Georgia Tech 2015

  • M.S. Bioengineering, Georgia Tech 2013 & M.S. Electrical Engineering, U. Mass Amherst 2009

  • B.S. Electrical Engineering, University of Tehran 2007

Current Lab Members

  • Sepideh Dolatshahi, Ph.D.

    PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

  • Anne Talkington, Ph.D.

    POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW

  • Remziye Erdogan

    PHD STUDENT

  • Rob Barnes

    PHD STUDENT

  • Gabriel Hanson

    PHD STUDENT

  • Shay Ladd

    PHD STUDENT

  • Kate Goundry

    UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCHER

  • Esha Tulsian

    UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCHER

  • Sam Kaufman

    UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCHER

Lab alumni

  • Shri Ramanujam, UG researcher 2022-23

    Shri’s research was aimed at optimizing assays for the genetic engineering of cell lines to modulate their glycosylation pattern. Outside of school/research, she loves reading, Taylor Swift, and woodworking!

  • Valeria Pabon, UG researcher, Spring 2022

    Valeria’s research under the supervision of Rob Barnes in the Dolatshahi lab was focused on the analysis of CITE-seq data to uncover the interaction between bispecific antibody armed T cells and tumor cells. Outside of school/research, she enjoys playing soccer, volunteering as an EMT, and playing the saxophone in the marching band.

  • Lavie Ngo, NSF REU Summer 2022

    Lavie, a VCU undergraduate student, joined the Dolatshahi lab as part of the UVA Summer REU in Multi-Scale Systems Bioengineering and Biomedical Data Sciences program. She presented her work titled “miRNA Regulation of Glycosylation Genes in Cancer Cell Lines“ at the UVA BME 4S seminar series as well as a poster at the BMES conference in October of 2022.

  • Danna Du, Undergraduate Researcher

    Danna ‘s research was focused on the protocol optimization for maternal blood sample collection, as part of our neonatal-maternal immunity project. Sarah was part-time researching in our lab from March -June 2022. She joined a master’s in Biomedical Engineering at UCLA in Fall 2022.

  • Joshua Ferey, M.D.

    Joshua was a medical student at the UVA School of Medicine. He worked on a review paper focused on the computational methods to infer and model inter-cellular interactions in the tumor microenvironment. He is currently doing his residency at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

  • Sarah Ames, Undergraduate Researcher

    Sarah joined our lab in the summer of 2020 and focused on neonatal-maternal immunity research. She is now a Product Development Engineer at restor3d.

  • Aubrey Winger, Undergraduate Researcher

    Aubrey joined the Dolatshahi lab in summer 2020. She studied the perturbation of glycosylation genes in non-small cell lung carcinoma in TCGA gene expression data.

  • Sarah Meng, Undergraduate Researcher

    Sarah’s research was focused on developing a kinetic-dynamic model of the bispecific antibody therapeutics. Sarah started her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin in Fall 2021.

  • Medhini Rachamallu, Undergraduate Researcher

    Medhini’s research was focused on using unsupervised computational methods to study the perturbation of glycosylation genes in skin cancers using TCGA data.

  • Abigail Cordiner, NSF REU Summer 2021

    Abigail was an NSF REU from North Carolina State University, co-mentored by the Pierce-Cottler lab. Under the supervision of her Ph.D. mentor, Remziye, she developed an agent-based model (ABM) of the transplacental transfer of antibodies in the Dolatshahi lab. She presented her poster titled “New Insights into IgG1 Transport Across Placenta Using Agent-Based Modeling” at BMES 2021.

Thinking of joining our lab?

The Dolatshahi lab is looking for talented, enthusiastic and diverse members to join their efforts. The lab’s priority is to provide training to highly motivated engineers and scientists who tackle real-world problems that closely impact people’s lives - and to have fun while doing so!  Prospective graduate students are encouraged to contact her: sdolatshahi@virginia.edu