Or is now pursuing making tools for the diseased brain, with an emphasis on neurodegeneration. He won numerous awards, including the NIH Trailblazer Award for Early Stage Investigators, the Chorafas Prize by the Karolinska institute, the Simons foundation, and has already been funded by the Reeves Foundation for blindness research, the NIH for Alzheimer’s research and the Pitt Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center for tauopathy research. In Counter-Disease Engineering, Or is building and leading a diverse, multicultural, impact driven and FUN group.

Chaoming has worked at the University of Pittsburgh for more than twenty years in the departments of pharmacology, plastic surgery, and physical medicine & rehabilitation. She possesses a broad range of knowledge and expertise with laboratory techniques, especially in molecular biology, protein chemistry, and cell signaling.

Vanesa currently leads projects focused on understanding neurodegenerative disease causality and mechanism including both Alzheimer’s Disease and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.

Vanesa intends to pursue a health-clinical psychology joint PhD–enabling her to both apply neurological mechanisms to neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders and practice clinically. In the future, Vanesa hopes to be able to provide translational medicine mental healthcare to patients.

Juan Fernandez is a University of Pittsburgh post-baccalaureate. He is presently working on  projects focused on understanding neurodegenerative disease causality and mechanism by way of expansion microscopy for enhanced tissue visualization. 

Juan leads his own project which explores the role of the brain microbiome and Alzheimer’s Disease pathologies. He has also collaborated with Vanesa Hyde in exploring the role of pathogenic infection in disease progression and understand the role of pathological tau.

Esther is working on establishing a definitive correlation between viral infection and Parkinson's Disease pathogenesis, and plans on diving deep into the causative mechanisms of this correlation. Given the widely known idiom “knowing the sickness is half the cure”, she hopes to uncover potential mechanisms of manipulating this process.

Currently, Sarah is pursuing her PhD in biomedical engineering at the Ohio State University. Her work focuses on sarcoidosis as she designs a 3D disease model based on an earlier 2D version. Sarah’s research goals focus on using an engineering-minded problem solving approach to solve biological challenges.

Krish is a postdoctoral research associate in the Counter Disease Engineering group. He has always been fascinated by the complexities and mysteries of human brain and his work in the lab is focused on interdisciplinary research, at the intersections of biology, physics, and engineering. Presently, Krish is leading projects focused on building genetically encoded nanotechnological tools (with applications in cancer therapy and super resolution imaging) and gene therapy for glial cells in brain with post baccalaureates and undergraduate students working under his supervision.

Greg Fisher is a shared co-member of the Dr. Or Shemesh laboratory in the neurobiology department at the University of Pittsburgh and the Dr. Bruce Armitage laboratory in the chemistry department of Carnegie Mellon University. He collaborates on projects involving adult brain cultures composed of neurons, glia and microglia.

Pururav (Puru) Ramakrishna is a post-baccalaureate researcher with a BSc in Biological Science and Neuroscience from the University of Pittsburgh. Puru’s current projects involve: 1) Developing novel optogenetic tools to achieve high-acuity vision restoration for treating retinal diseases causing blindness, like retinitis pigmentosa. 2) Developing novel tools for CT and MRI imaging applications. 3) Developing nanotechnologies for disease therapeutics

Amanda Lin is a senior undergraduate student at the University of Pittsburgh majoring in Neuroscience and Mathematical Biology. Currently, she works with Krishnaishis Chatterjee in his research synthesizing nanoparticles and working with modRNA. 

Sean Carmody is a senior undergraduate student at the University of Pittsburgh majoring in Computational Biology. He is currently working on a project utilizing new technologies to better trace cells in live tissue. 

Claire graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2023 with a BSc in emergency medicine with a minor in chemistry. She served as a research assistant in the summer of 2021 where she aided in optimizing the expansion microscopy protocol during the initial stages of the lab. Claire currently works as a paramedic. She intends to apply to medical school in the upcoming cycle.