Meet the Mukerji Lab

The Mukerji and Guidon Labs gather to welcome and celebrate summer Neurology Youth Scholars Diara Canton (Worcester State '22) and Balwant-Amrit V. Singh (Emory '23), as well as Harvard-Amgen Scholar Christian Cepeda (Stanford '22), with a barbecue at Dr. Guidon's house. Learn more about the Youth Neurology Education & Research Program.

Our Core Team

Shibani S. Mukerji, MD, PhD

Principal Investigator

Dr. Shibani S. Mukerji is the Associate Director of the Neuroinfectious Diseases Unit of the Division of Neuroimmunology and Neuroinfectious Diseases at Mass General and Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. She is an MD and PhD graduate of Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Dana Gabuzda lab at the Dana Farber Cancer Center. Dr. Mukerji received specialized clinical training in the neurological management of infectious diseases from the Mass General Brigham/Harvard Medical School residency and fellowship programs and sees patients with HIV infection in the MGH Neurology Department and the Division of Infectious Diseases. She is a co-investigator on the Phase II clinical trial “A Study of the Gut Barrier and Blood Vessel Inflammation in Individuals With and Without HIV” and PI of the MGH Prospective Encephalitis and Meningitis Study (PEMS), a clinical research platform that combines patient data with biofluids to improve detection of acute neurological infections. Dr. Mukerji grew up in Phoenix and enjoys spending time biking and traveling with her husband and daughter.

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Emily Rudmann

Clinical Research Coordinator

Emily joined the Mukerji Lab as a clinical research coordinator in July 2021 after graduating from Boston College with a BS in Biology in 2020 and working for a year as a research technician in a microbial systems biology lab. She is from Rochester, NY and previously worked on research projects investigating “-omes” of Streptococcus pneumoniae, including the “essentialome” and “virulome” using a pan-genome approach during her undergraduate education, and the “tolerome” in her lab technician year. She is the Lead CRC for the Mukerji lab and works on the Phase II Clinical Trial SOOTHE, investigating the impact of a neurosteroid drug intervention on neural connectivity, immune function, and mood in people with HIV. She hopes to become a physician and enjoys reading, listening to podcasts on pop culture, and trying new restaurants.

Research Fellows

Arjun Singh

Arjun Singh joined the Mukerji Lab as a post-doctoral research fellow in 2022. He is an MBBS graduate and has worked as a Resident Medical Officer in the Healing Hospital, Chandigarh, India.  Arjun is from Chandigarh and is interested in coding, especially identifying ways to streamline learning and promote education. He was an active member of the International Federation of Medical Students Association and helped organize blood donation camps, health awareness camps, and capacity-building events in India. He hopes to become a neurologist in the future. In his free time, he likes to go to the gym, read and play the guitar.

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Douglas Wilcox, MD, PhD
Resident Physician
Doug works in the Mukerji Lab as a Resident Physician in the Harvard BWH-MGH Neurology Program. He completed both his MD and PhD from Northwestern University, where he worked with Dr. Richard Longnecker on the pathogenesis of Herpes Simplex Virus Encephalitis.

Doug also works with Dr. Chenghua Gu at Harvard Medical School on the immune response to pathogens at the blood-brain barrier. In the Mukerji lab, his focus is on the pathogenesis of acute viral encephalitis, including Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) and Herpes Simplex Encephalitis (HSE). Doug grew up in Durham, New Hampshire and enjoys hiking and traveling.

Undergraduate/Medical Students

Amita Bose

Amita joined the Mukerji Lab as a summer 2022 research intern and stayed on to pursue her research project on subjective versus objective assessments of cognition function in people with HIV and biochemical markers underlying cognition. She is a medical student at the University of Connecticut. Amita graduated from Amherst College in 2017 with a BA in biology and psychology. After college, she was a clinical research coordinator with the MGH Adolescent Neuroendocrine Unit. Amita worked on studies about bone health, metabolism, and cognitive changes in teens with anorexia nervosa and obesity. During her free time, she enjoys reading and baking.

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Livia Brennan

Livia joined the lab in May 2022 while pursuing her BS in Mathematics and Biology on the Pre-Medical track at the University of Notre Dame and is staying on to profile endogenous neuroactive steroids in people with HIV. She is from Hingham, MA, and has previously researched cancer genetics at Notre Dame and HIV/AIDS dementia research at the Ances Neurology Lab at Washington University in St. Louis. In her free time, she enjoys skiing, drawing, and cooking!

 

MGH Neurology clinicians, researchers, and staff at the 2019 McCourt Foundation’s Boston Waterfront 5K, an effort to fundraise for neurology research.

Alumni

Clinical Reasearch Coordinators

Sarah CollensKiana Keller
Michael Leone

Clinical Research Fellows

Katherine Holroyd

Navid Valizadeh

Haitham Alabsi

Data Scientist

Elissa Ye

Summer Undergraduate and Medical Students

Diara Canton