John G. Younger, MD, MS

John completed his undergraduate and medical education at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He completed his clinical training in Emergency Medicine at Orlando Regional Medical Center in Orlando, Florida. Following residency, he conducted a two-year research fellowship in acute lung injury at the University of Michigan. During his fellowship he obtained a Masters of Science in Clinical Research Design and Statistical Analysis through the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He also furthered his clinical training by serving as first a fellow and then an attending physician on the Extracorporeal Life Support Service within the Division of Surgical Critical Care. He became an assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Michigan in 1999. He is currently in his fourth year of a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Mentored Clinical Scientist Award. He is active in both the Emergency Medicine Foundation, for which he has reviewed scientific proposals since 1995, and the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, for which he currently administers the Research Fellowship Training Grant as part of the Society’s Grants Committee.

Sunita Shankar-Sinha, MS

Sunita obtained her Bachelors of Science degree in Microbiology followed by a Masters of Science in Biotechnology from Madurai Kamaraj University in Maduria, India, in 1993. She subsequently trained as a research fellow in the Department of Zoology at the University of Poona where her research focus was the effects of anemia on eucaryotic initiation factor-2a (EIF-2a) expression. She then spent 4 years at the Indian Institute of Science in the Department of Molecular Reproduction, Development, and Genetics studying cell surface receptors in reproductive tissues of male rats. She has also studied a number of protein-protein, DNA-protein, and DNA-DNA interactions using Surface Plasmon Resonance. Before joining our lab, Sunita helped establish the cDNA Microarray Core facility within the Department of Pathology at the University of Michigan. She has extensive molecular biological experience, and is currently overseeing our work with targeted mutation of human pathogens as well as host and pathogen gene expression profiling with RPA and microarray techniques.

Marc Mickiewicz, MD

Marc is currently a senior resident in the Department of Emergency Medicine. He received his BS in Biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1995, and his MD from the University of Illinois in 1999. While in Champaign, Marc became interested in research and studied molluscan neurobiology in the Department of Physiology for three years. He spent 2 months in the Younger lab in 2002, and was recently awarded an Emergency Medicine Foundation resident research grant to sponsor a 4 month dedicated block of laboratory time during his chief resident year.

Gabriel Valencia

Gabriel is currently a fourth year medical student at the University of Michigan Medical School, and is spending a year in the Younger lab prior to completing his senior year. He received his BS in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999. Gabriel is examining the role of complement in mediating susceptibility to Gram-negative pneumonia during recovery from abdominal sepsis. In the autumn, Gabriel was awarded an NIH research supplement from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to help fund his work.