About Us

Dongfang Liu, PhD, Associate professor in the Department of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine and the Center for Immunity and Inflammation, Director of Immunoassay Program in the Department of Pathology immunology, and Laboratory Medicine

In 2012, Dr. Liu was recruited to Baylor College of Medicine as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Department of Pathology & Immunology, before joining Houston Methodist Research Institute as an assistant professor in 2015. In 2018, Dr. Liu was promoted to an Associate Professor in Houston Methodist Research Institute.  Dr. Liu did his postdoctoral training on natural killer (NK) cells at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 2005 to 2011.  After completing the postdoctoral training, he joined Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard in 2011 as a senior research scientist, where he worked on HIV-specific CTL dysfunction with a focus on PD-1 in HIV-specific CTL immunological synapse.  Dr. Liu's current research is primarily focused on the immunobiology of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T and NK cells, immunoreceptors, CAR immunotherapy, and HIV-specific CTLs in chronic HIV and its related malignancies, with a focus on immunological synapse biology and its clinical applications.

Xuening Wang, Senior Research Associate

Xuening Wang, PhD, joined Liu lab as a Senior Research Associate in 2020. Xuening received his PhD in the Department of Pathology from Rutgers University-New Jersey Medical School, where he completed his doctoral research in Dr. George Studzinski's lab. His research mainly focused on MAP kinase signaling in vitamin D and antioxidants-induced differentiation, cell cycle arrest and cell death in various cancer cells. Currently, he is investigating the molecular mechanisms of pCrk inhibitors and antioxidants induced growth inhibition and various forms of cell death in breast cancer and hepatocellular carcinoma cells.

Carlos Chih-Hsiung Chen, Research Associate

Carlos Chih-Hsiung Chen, PhD completed his doctoral training in Dr. Barth Grant's lab at Rutgers University – UMDNJ Molecular Biosciences joint program in 2007, whose PhD research was focused on studying membrane trafficking. He then joined Dr. Christopher Rongo's lab at Waksman Institute as a postdoctoral fellow where he investigated glutamate receptor trafficking in C. elegans. In 2013, he joined Dr. Cliff Brangwynne's research group at Princeton University in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering as a research fellow. He recently moved back to Rutgers and joined Dr. Federico Sesti's lab at Robert Wood Johnson in the Department of Neurosciences and Cell Biology. He joined the Liu Lab in summer of 2020 as a research associate, and is currently investigating the quality of immunological synapse in clinical applications.

Hsiang-chi Tseng, Postdoctoral fellow

Hsiang-chi Tseng (Edward), PhD received two master degrees from NYU: General Biology and Environmental Medicine. He joined Liu Lab as a postdoctoral fellow in 2019 after completing his PhD training in Dr. Joan Durbin's lab at Rutgers University – New Jersey Medical School. His doctoral research mainly focused on bacterial superinfection model and the role of interferons affecting the functionality of innate immune cells. He is currently investigating new immunotherapeutic treatments for hepatocellular carcinoma and role of Crk in immune responses.

Saiaditya Badeti, MD/PhD student

Aditya received his B.S. in Neuroscience and History & Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh where he worked on his thesis in the laboratory of Dr. Linda Rinaman, studying the effects of food deprivation on restraint stress-induced activation of brainstem neurons innervating the limbic forebrain in rats. He is a 2nd year MD/PhD student in the lab. He is currently investigating the role and function of Natural Killer (NK) Cells in Hepatocellular Carcinoma. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he has taken initiative to investigate the function of NK cells in COVID-19. He is interested in pursuing a Pathology Residency following his medical school training and continuing research in Immunology.

Minh Ma, Pre-doctoral PhD student

Minh received her B.S. in Biochemistry and minor in Business and Management at the University of Missouri-Columbia. As an undergraduate, she initiated a bioremediation project to efficiently degrade dioxins using a spore display system developed by Dr. George Stewart. She joined a biotech company in the Greater St. Louis Area named Benson Hill as a Research Associate in the R&D after her B.S. At Benson Hill, she developed several immunoassays, purified nucleases for the novel CRISPR technology, and worked closely with the Regulatory Sciences team and the CROs for the preparation of GLP. Minh joined our lab in 2020, and is now studying the efficacies of different CAR-NK for the treatment of COVID-19.

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