Research Staff

Alessandra is a Biologist and Specialist in Human Genetics who received her Masters in Health Sciences at the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (Curitiba – Paraná – Brazil). In her academic life, she worked to understand the immune, cellular and genetics responses in human and murine models for different pathologies. She has worked in transplant immunology since 2010, when she started her activities at the Immunogenetics Laboratory of Hospital Cajuru (PR). She has held positions as a Techical Supervisor, Quality Analyst and Senior Analyst, where she developed her clinical knowledge in the immunology of transplantation. She started in the Tambur Lab in October of 2021.

In her free time Alessandra likes to spend her time doing activities with her family, like seeing movies and eating popcorn, walking in the park and cooking for everyone.

Karime is Brazilian Biologist who received her Masters in 2010 and PhD 2019 in Cellular and Molecular Biology. In her master’s degree, she worked with in vitro studies focused on the role of reactive oxygen species and nitrogen in the progression of chronic kidney disease in vascular cells. Karime’s Ph.D. thesis had the main objective to investigate the involvement of oxidant molecules in the signaling of migratory and proliferative processes of vascular cells during arterial intimal hyperplasia in response to pathological events, such as restenosis. Karime has had visiting Fellowship at Emory University, Atlanta-GA, where she worked with a leading researcher on the VSMC redox signaling pathways that control the cytoskeleton and cellular adhesive forces. In 2014, she had the opportunity to expand from basic research to clinical practice by joining the Laboratory of Immunogenetics at Hospital Cajuru (Brazil). Since then, she has been training in both serological and molecular histocompatibility techniques and studying risk assessment through anti-HLA antibody titration and the efficiency of patient treatments in desensitization protocols. Karime started in the Tambur Lab in 2023.

 In her free time she loves to spend time with her husband and dog daughter.

Desiree received her BS in Biology from Southeastern University in 2018, and her MA in Biomedical Sciences from Roosevelt University in 2021. After completing her master’s degree she began working in the Comprehensive Transplant Center at Northwestern University as a Medical Technologist. This is where she became extremely fascinated with transplant immunology. She started in the Tambur Lab in October of 2022.

In her free time Desiree likes to spend her time with her friends, traveling, and going to the beach.

Maria is a nephrologist with special interest in kidney transplantation. She obtained her MD and nephrology degrees in Milan (Italy) in 2011 and 2017, respectively. Since 2018, she joined the Transplant Immunology research group at Bellvitge University in Barcelona, where she completed her PhD training, first supported by a Fellowship of the European Society for Organ Transplantation (ESOT). In 2021 she defended her PhD thesis alloimmunity in transplantation, studying both the humoral and T-cell harms of alloresponses and the role of HLA compatibility.

She is currently working at Vall d’Hebron University in Barcelona as transplant nephrologist and researcher at Vall d’Hebron Research Institute.

In 2022-2023 she had the opportunity to join Dr Anat Tambur’s research Lab at Northwestern University for a post-doc scholarship for a research project focusing on immunogenicity of HLA class II (DQ) molecules in kidney transplantation.

Chelsea received her BS in Integrative Biology from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2015, and her MS in Medical Laboratory Science from Rush University in 2019. She conducted her Master’s thesis in the Department of Pharmacology at Northwestern University, where she studied the immunological role of calcium signalling in inflammatory diseases and subsequently fell in love with the field of immunology. She started in the Tambur lab in May of 2019 as the only full-time research technologist. She worked in the Tambur lab from 2019-2022. 

Chelsea is now a Principal Research Associate within the Core Technologies Cell Analytics team at Universal Cells in Seattle doing pre-clinical research on gene-edited stem cells for cell therapeutics. 

Dylan is a fourth-year resident in Urology at Northwestern interested in becoming a transplant surgeon and urologist for transplant patients. He earned his BA in Neuroscience and Behavior from Columbia University, MPH in Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology from UC Berkeley and MD from the UC San Francisco School of Medicine. At UCSF he was mentored by Laurence Baskin, MD, Gerald Cunha, PhD and Thomas Chi, MD and performed research investigating the development of the human external and internal urogenital organs. He worked in the Tambur Lab during his research year of 2021-2022. 

Dylan loves the operating room and getting to know patients and their families. When not at work, he enjoys running along Lake Michigan, dancing and spending quality time with old friends.