Student Profiles

Rhea graduated with honors from Tulane University with a degree in Mathematics and Chemistry, where she participated in the research groups of Dr. James Hyman and Dr. Bruce Gibb. Following graduation, she completed a two-year postbaccalaureate fellowship in the lab of Dr. Michael Lenardo at NIAID. There, Rhea studied the effects of genetic mutations underlying primary immunodeficiencies, specifically how they cause dysregulation of T-cell biology. Using in-vitro experiments on patient samples, and an in-vivo mouse system, Rhea helped to characterize how a loss of the protein iRHOM2 causes a pleiotropic disease in patients by compromising the activity of the metalloprotease ADAM17, which cleaves key inflammatory cytokines from the T-cell membrane such as TNF. This work was published in the journal Nature Immunology.

Most recently, Rhea completed her first two years of medical school at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, before entering the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program for her PhD training under the mentorship of Dr. Louis Staudt and Dr. Daniel Hodson. As an NIH-Cambridge Scholar, Rhea seeks to study the mechanisms underlying the different sub-groups of Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma and characterize new targets for immune-therapies and potential treatments of this disease.