People

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Esteban Engel, Principal Investigator

Email: eengel [at] princeton.edu
Office phone: 609-258-7888
Esteban obtained his BSc and MSc in biochemistry from Universidad de Chile. He was part of the team that produced the first recombinant subunit vaccine against the salmon pathogenic bacteria Piscirickettsia salmonis. The vaccine was licensed to Novartis Animal Health and it is commercialized globally. Next he did his his PhD in Biotechnology at Universidad Andres Bello, studying plant viruses. Esteban developed a diagnostic oligonucleotide microarray for simultaneous detection of more than 50 grapevine viruses. He discovered new viral species infecting grapevines in Chile, some with high incidence and deleterious effects on the crop quality and yield. In 2010 Esteban moved to Princeton University in New Jersey, where he was a PEW postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Professor Lynn Enquist studying alpha herpesviruses infection in the nervous system. In 2015 Esteban started his own research lab at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, where he also directs the Viral Core Facility.
Oliver Huang

Oliver Huang, PhD. Research Specialist II

Email: haoh [at] princeton.edu
Office Phone: 690-258-...
Oliver received his B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology at University of California, Berkeley, with the emphasis on immunology. For his thesis work, he demonstrated the activation of innate immune pathway P38 MAPK by gut microbiota in C. elegans. He further received his PhD in Virology under the mentorship of Prof Lynn Enquist, studying virus-induced degradation of kinesin-3 motor KIF1A in neuronal infection of an alphaherpesvirus, pseudorabies virus. Oliver joined the Engel Lab in August 2020.
Carola

Carola Maturana, PhD. Postdoctoral Research Associate

Email: maturana [at] princeton.edu
Office phone: 609-258-7468
Carola completed her BSc in Biochemistry at Universidad Austral de Chile and MSc in Neuroscience from Universidad de Valparaiso, studying effect of odorants on the expression of c-fos in zebrafish. She did her MSc and PhD in Physiological Sciences at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Carola studied involvement of connexin 43 and pannexin 1 hemichannels of gilal cells in the neuroinflammatory response induced by glucocorticoid maternal. She was awarded a grant from the Universidad Católica Accelerator Program, to study the use of selective inhibitors of hemichannels formed by connexins to treat epilepsy. These lead to a Patent application. Carola then moved to Colorado State University, where she worked on the modulation of anestrus in sheep by hypothalamic estrogen receptors. In 2017 Carola started her Postdoc in Engel lab at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.
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Angela Chan, Research Specialist II

Email: achan [at] princeton.edu
Office phone 609-258-7468
Angela received her BA in Biology at Hood College, Maryland. After graduation, she worked in the Monoclonal Antibody Facility at Princeton University for 10 years. Later, she worked in the lab of Dr. M. Gerard Waters in the Department of Molecular Biology, where she purified and made polyclonal antibodies to Dsl3p. For the past 17 years, she has been the lab manager and a researcher in the lab of Dr. Virginia Zakian. There she used ChIP and genetic approaches to determine the mechanism of telomerase recruitment and regulation and investigated the roles of the Pif1 DNA helicase at telomeres. Her work has been published in several journals. She joined the Engel Lab at PNI in 2019.
Gabriela Vogeley, Undergrad student

Gabriela Vogeley, Undergrad student

Email: gvogeley [at] princeton.edu
Gabriela is pursuing the Neuroscience concentration with a Cognitive Science certificate. She is strongly interested in the intersection between neuroscience and medicine and hopes that her senior thesis project, which aims to work on a new human viral tracer, will be able to contribute to future developments in both of these fields.