Our Group

Manolis Roulis, PhD

Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
manolis.roulis@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
LinkedIn profile

Manolis studied Biology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. He pursued his doctoral studies in "Alexander Fleming", in Athens, Greece (Kollias lab), focusing on the role of TNF and MAP kinase signaling in the pathogenesis of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases in mouse models. His postdoctoral studies in the same lab led him to the discovery of a fibroblast-mediated mechanism of intestinal epithelial homeostasis. He moved to Yale and joined the laboratory of Richard Flavell, where he focused on the functional diversity of intestinal mesenchymal cells and investigated the role of specific fibroblast populations in intestinal tumorigenesis as well as in chronic inflammation and fibrosis. He started as an Assistant Professor at UPenn in July 2023.

Eleanna Kaffe, PhD

Instructor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
eleana.kaffe@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
LinkedIn profile

Eleanna studied biochemistry and earned her PhD at the University of Thessaly in Greece, focusing on mass spectrometry and liver diseases. As a postdoctoral researcher in "Alexander Fleming" in Athens, Greece (Aidinis lab), she studied the role of phospholipid metabolism in liver fibrosis and cancer, by employing mouse models and mass spectrometry-based lipidomic analyses. She moved to Yale and worked on congenital cholangiopathies (Strazzabosco lab). Then she joined Richard Flavell's lab at Yale, where she developed a novel humanized mouse model that bears a functional human hepatic tissue - read her 2023 paper in Cell here. Her current research focuses on the role of lipid metabolic pathways in chronic liver and intestinal diseases. She started as an Instructor at UPenn in September 2023.

Maria Sacta, MD, PhD

Fellow in Allergy & Immunology
sactam@chop.edu

Maria is an Allergist-Immunologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She completed her MD-PhD training at the Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan Kettering Tri-Institutional MD-PhD program where she studied transcriptional mechanisms of gene repression in macrophages during her PhD training. She went on to complete Pediatrics residency at Boston Children's Hospital and is currently completing Allergy-Immunology fellowship at CHOP. She is interested in the molecular mechanisms underlying the development of food allergies.

Yutong Li

Master's student
yutong66@seas.upenn.edu

Yutong is a master’s student in Bioengineering at UPenn and he joined the lab in October 2023. Originally from China, he studied biomedical engineering as an undergraduate at the University of British Columbia and at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology. He is interested in single-cell approaches to uncover mechanisms of interaction between tumor-initiating stem cells and the immune system. He likes playing music and basketball in his spare time.

Zhixin Liang

Master's student
zhixinl@seas.upenn.edu

Zhixin is a master's student in Bioengineering at UPenn. As an undergraduate, she studied Biological Sciences at UC Santa Barbara. She joined our lab in December 2023 and she is interested in studying fibroblast-mediated mechanisms of disease in vivo.

Shimin Liu

Master's student
shimin.liu@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Shimin is a Master's student in the Biotechnology program of UPenn and she joined the lab in September 2024. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto, where she conducted research in cancer biology and stem cells. She is interested in cell interactions between immune cells, fibroblasts, and tumor cells within the tumor microenvironment. Outside the lab she is a figure skater.

Lauren Questell

Rotation student - Cell and Molecular Biology Graduate Group / Microbiology, Virology, and Parasitology

Lauren is a first-year PhD student in the CAMB-MVP program, with an interest in understanding host-diet-microbe interactions in the context of colorectal cancer. She earned her BS in Environmental Science from Johns Hopkins University and worked at the U.S. EPA before shifting her focus to human health. She completed her ScM in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Johns Hopkins, where her thesis research in the Suez Lab explored the impact of artificial sweeteners on the gut microbiome and metabolic health.

Kaily Ayisi

Undergraduate student

Kailey is an undergraduate student majoring in neuroscience at UPenn. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, she joined our lab in June 2024. Kailey has an interest in studying neurological disorders as well as the interactions between fibroblasts and neurons. She plans to pursue an MD in the future.

Kaley Chen

Undergraduate student

Kaley is an undergraduate student studying nursing at UPenn, originally from California. She joined our lab in November 2024. Kaley is interested in studying metabolic pathways in human disease and she works with Eleanna on mass spectrometry and lipidomics.

Deborah Johnson

Administrative Assistant, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
deborah.johnson3@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
215-573-4765

Deborah Johnson joined the lab in April 2024 as the Administrative Coordinator. Prior to joining the lab she spent 19 years at Penn Nursing as a Research Project Manager on various projects. Deborah is co-author on several research publications and enjoys going to Broadway Musicals.

Principal investigator