Ten years and going strong! Tenth year anniversary of the Ram Lab!

​We had a fun and productive year in the lab despite the continued struggles in our personal and professional lives due to the pandemic. We supported each other in the lab, welcomed new members, and bid farewell to others. We were excited for Nandan Gokhale who received the Helen Hay Whitney Award.  Yo Okamura joined our group who received a fellowship from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. These are prestigious post-doctoral fellowships and we are excited to see their continued successes.  Rachel Van Gelder passed her General exam progressing to the next stage of her doctoral program! Frank Soveg and Johannes Schwerk, with help from others in the lab and the Seattle immunology community, discovered a critical immune gene variant that restricts SARS-CoV-2. This OAS1 variant also predicts patients progressing to severe COVID-19 disease. We are glad that we were able to contribute to the understanding of why certain people progress to severe COVID-19 disease. Frank Soveg received his doctorate on this work and he is currently pursuing a post-doctoral fellowship in the Gladstone Institute.  Johannes Schwerk, Matthew Hendricks, and Snehal Ozarkar moved on to chase their dreams in industry.  We thank them for making the lab a fun place and for their hard work over the years. Ram lab is approaching ten years this December and I am thankful for the current and past members for being so amazing! We thank all the members of the immunology community in Seattle for supporting each other during the pandemic. Happy Holidays!

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