Post Doctoral Fellows
Fatemeh (Leila) Vahedi

Ph.D. Students
Alexa Mansour
Amin Soukhaklari

MSc. Students
Maddie Read
Alyssa Mark

Undergraduate Students
Emilia Berg
Tristan Larche
Selina Sun
Farhan Moinuddin
Rita Gergis
Ana Pivanenka

Past Lab Members

Alyssa Mark

MSc Candidate​

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Alyssa completed her Bachelor of Health Sciences in Biochemistry (Co-op) at McMaster University. She explored a range of fields, including evolutionary biology, synthetic biology, and cancer research, before discovering her interest in immunology and virology through her coursework. During her co-op at STEMCELL Technologies, she optimized immunomagnetic cell separation kits, and further explored his interest. This led her to pursue a Master's degree in the Ashkar Lab to study the immunoregulatory functions of interferons.

 

Interferons are cytokines responsible for protecting against viral infections. Two classes of interests are type I and III IFNs which share in their antiviral functions but seem to lead to more pro-inflammatory or anti-inflammatory responses, respectively. However, the mechanisms underlying these contrasting responses remain unclear. Using a combination of wet-lab and bioinformatics approaches, Alyssa will investigate the mechanisms driving these differences.

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