Lab Members - Graduate Students

Kristy is a PhD student who joined the lab in 2022. She graduated with a BS in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and a minor in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. Her research is focused on the role of STING activation in autoinflammatory disease. She is a joint student in Fitzgerald and Rothstein labs.

Mingqi is a PhD student who joined the lab in 2019. He received his BSc in Biological Sciences from Peking University, China. He is working on nucleic acid sensing pathways.

Shrutika is a PhD student who joined the lab in 2020. She received her Master's in Pharmacology from Northeastern University, Boston, MA. Her current research is focused on understanding the role of a scavenger protein, MFGE8 in recognizing and phagocytosing debri generated by different modes of cell death and how this plays a role in prevention of autoimmune diseases such as SLE.

Kavya is a PhD student who joined the lab in 2024. She completed her bachelor’s degree in biotechnology at D.Y Patil University in Mumbai, India, and then earned her MS in Medical Biotechnology from the University of Illinois, Chicago. Before joining Umass Chan, Kavya worked for several years in the platform discovery group at Kymera Therapeutics. She is interested in studying type I Interferon signaling in innate immunity.

Wei is a PhD student who joined the lab in 2023. She received her BSc in Immunology from the University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada. She is interested in understanding the activation of inflammatory pathways during gene therapy and gene editing. She is jointly mentored by Dr. Kate Fitzgerald and Dr. Guangping Gao in the Gene Therapy Center.