About Us
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Trudy Morrison, PhD
Lab head and Principal InvestigatorDr. Morrison has a BA from Wellesley college and obtained her PhD from the Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology at Tufts University Medical School. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is currently a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Physiological Systems of the UMass Chan Medical School. She was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) and fellow of the American Academy for Microbiology. She is an Associate Editor for Science Advances, the online version of Science Magazine, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Virology. She has served as the Program Chair for the American Society for Virology, the Chair of the Microbiology Test Committee for the National Board of Medical Examiners, the Chair of Division T of the American Society for Microbiology, and a member of numerous study sections of the National Institutes of health. She has over 100 publications concerning RNA virus entry and assembly as well as vaccine development.
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Lori Cullen (McGinnes)
Research AssociateLori obtained her B. S. from the microbiology department of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has over 30 years of experience with paramyxoviruses and pneumoviruses. She, along with Dr. Homer Pantua, a past graduate student in the lab, developed virus-like particles as a tool for studies of virus assembly and as vaccine candidates. She has been instrumental in the characterization of the properties of VLPs, and in the characterization of immune responses of animals to VLPs assembled with different viral proteins. She is a co-author on over 50 publications and is first author on many of them.
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Ting Sun, PhD
Research AssociateTing obtained her BS and MS from the University of Qingdao and her PhD from Washington State University in Food Science and Analytical Chemistry. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Nevada Cancer institute, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. New to the laboratory, she is studying VLP vaccine candidates for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Past Lab Members
Steven Hatfield, PhD, former research associate. Steve obtained his Ph.D. from the Biochemistry Department of the University of Washington where he studied miRNA involvement in regulation of Drosophila germline stem cell division. He was a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Raymond Welsh and Dr. Madelyn Schmidt where he focused on viral immunology. He recently left the Morrison lab for a position in a Boston biotech company. In the Morrison lab, he was actively engaged in studies of VLPs as vaccines for the elderly and as maternal vaccines for protection of neonates from respiratory syncytial virus disease.
Homer Pantua, PhD, former graduate student. Now Senior Research Associate at Genetec. Homer obtained his DVM degree from the University of the Philippines prior to attending the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences for his PhD. He was instrumental in establishing the VLP technology in the laboratory.
Jason Laliberte, PhD, former graduate student. Now head of molecular virology in the oncology division of AstraZeneca.
Javier Gordon Ogembo, PhD, former visiting scientist. Now Associate Professor in the Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope Medical Center
Surbhi Jain, PhD, former graduate student. Now practicing physician.
Julie Reitter, PhD, former graduate student and research associate (deceased).
Victor Dolganiuc, PhD, former postdoctoral fellow
Katherine Gravel, BS, former research associate
Adam Capoferri, BS, post baccalaureate student
Gretal Torres, BS, undergraduate research fellow
We all pulled together! Left to right: T. Morrison, Kathy Gravel, Lori McGinnes, Homer Pantua, Surbhi Jain, Julie Reitter, Jason Laliberte