Leadership

The word Doctor originated from the Latin verb “Doc’ere”, or – to teach. This is the most valuable aspect of my work – being an educator – of trainees (I run one of the few HLA laboratory director training fellowships); – of physicians, either via daily consultation for our patients or via presentations at conferences; – and – of anyone who is willing to stop and listen to me talk about HLA, and specifically about HLA-DQ.

Read more about my research, what I love about HLA, and about my hair, on my AST’s member spotlight page.

You don’t need good vision to see who’s really in charge around here

Dave joined the lab in 2016 after receiving his PhD in Immunology from Emory University. He was first introduced to HLA as a medical technologist in 2009, and worked at Emory University Hospital with Anat’s former mentor, Dr. Howie Gebel, prior to beginning his graduate studies. Dave completed his laboratory director training in the fall of 2020 and is now certified by the American College for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics. He is the Assistant Director of the Transplant Immunology lab, as well as the director of the CAP-accredited Clinical Research Laboratory and Biorepository, which supports sample processing, storage, and distribution for numerous internal and external clinical research studies at Northwestern.

His main scientific interests include investigating the factors that influence the formation of de novo donor-specific HLA antibodies, as well as collaborating with clinicians to utilize HLA antibody information to inform clinical practice and improve patient outcomes. Dave also works closely with the Kidney Paired Donation program, which helps find matches for incompatible living donor and recipient pairs.

Alek obtained his MD degree in 2009 at the Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, North Macedonia; and his PhD degree in 2020 at KU Leuven, Belgium. His PhD thesis “innovative approaches for HLA-matching and immune risk stratification in kidney transplantation” led to multiple publications, leading to his impressive list of over 30 manuscript, and numerous invited presentations at national and international conferences.
Alek is a fellow of the European Board of Transplant Immunology and his long-term goal is to contribute to understanding of allograft rejection processes and identifying means to prolong graft survival

Nancy Herrera has been working in HLA for the past 19 years.  She started her HLA career as a research assistant studying the role of monocyte derived dendritic cells in antigen processing and presentation. She was then promoted to supervise the clinical research laboratory of the Northwestern University Comprehensive Transplant Program. In 2011, she moved into the clinical setting, to become the supervisor of the HLA antibody identification and monitoring group of the Transplant Immunology Laboratory and she now serves as the General Laboratory Manager of the Northwestern University Transplant Immunology Laboratories. Nancy is an ABHI Certified Histocompatibility Technologist (CHT) and Specialist (CHS) since 2006 and holds a Master’s degree in Quality Assurance and Regulatory Science from Northwestern University.  Nancy loves HLA and cannot find a day when she has not learned something new in the field.