My drive is to understand autoimmunity at a fundamental level: what causes it, what maintains the process long-term, and what fuels the flares… As a rheumatologist, I see new patients every week that struggle with devastating autoimmune complications. Their stories are the basis of our research in the lab.

I obtained my MD from Athens School of Medicine (Greece) in 2024. I joined the Apostolidis Lab to study the pathogenesis of SLE and other autoimmune conditions. Currently, my main objectives include investigating the loss of self-tolerance to endogenous nucleic acids as a disease mechanism in SLE and researching the role of extracellular vesicles in disease diagnosis, stratification and prognostication

IrAEs are autoimmune complications occurring in cancer patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors. I am studying the pathogenesis and development of such syndromes to improve the patient experience and elucidate the proximal events of autoimmunity development. I am using genomic, transcriptomic, and cytometric approaches to investigate the role of memory CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in the development of irAEs.

Akira implements models of deep learning, machine learning, precision medicine, and multimodal data integration in the context of immune responses. His work focuses on integrating high-dimensional datasets generated on hundreds of patients with autoimmunity, correlate them with clinical outcomes and develop prediction models.

Miyako joins us for her third IGG rotation. Her background lies in T cell responses, TCR-based screens and and in vitro functional assays. For her rotation project, she is interested in understanding more the expression of mobile genetic elements in patients with autoimmunity using transcriptional and epigenetic assays along with long-read sequencing.

I am responsible for the recruitment of research subjects, data management, and collection of biospecimens for our immune-related adverse events cohort study. I hope that this work helps improve the management of autoimmune complications and patient outcomes.

Yiwei joined us for her 2nd IGG rotation in the spring of 2025. Her main interests lie at the intersection of immunotherapy responses in patients with cancer and autoimmunity.