meet our team
Maurizio Chioccioli BSc, MSc, PhD (he/him/his), Assistant Professor
Mau is an Assistant Professor in Genetics and Comparative Medicine at Yale School of Medicine. His research focus is to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms that govern tissue regeneration and repair in the lung, and how these pathways are hijacked in disease. His experience and expertise span multiple areas from biophysics and live-imaging microscopy to molecular biology, genetics, and human respiratory diseases. Mau is from Arezzo, Tuscany, city of Piero Della Francesca, S.S. Arezzo and the Giostra del Saracino (he is proudly supporting the “Quartiere di Porta Crucifera”). He obtained his undergraduate degree at the University of Florence in Tuscany, before going on to obtain his PhD from the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland in Australia. He then performed his postdoctoral studies at the Cavendish Laboratory, Physics of Medicine Institute at Cambridge University where he worked on the biophysical basis of dynamic ciliary beating in respiratory diseases such as cystic fibrosis and primary ciliary dyskinesia. He was recruited into the lab of Naftali Kaminski at Yale School of Medicine in 2018 where he focused primarily on establishing new techniques and approaches to investigate lung remodeling and repair. He was appointed Assistant Professor in Genetics and Comparative Medicine in September 2023.
Lei earned her Doctor of Philosophy in Microbiology from Wuhan University in China, focusing on the pathogenesis of Salmonella virulence-associated effectors and the host innate immune response in invasive Salmonella Typhimurium. Her postdoctoral training at the University of Iowa primarily focused on airway epithelial cell biology and gene therapy for cystic fibrosis (CF). This included studying the role of pulmonary ionocytes in chloride transport and airway surface liquid maintenance, developing gene addition strategies for CFTR in primary human airway epithelial cells (HBECs) using viral vector(s), and applying prime editing (PE) for genomic correction of CF ΔF508 mutations in HBECs. She has published several peer-reviewed articles and gained valuable research experience in these fields. Her research interests include cellular and molecular regulation during lung disease progression, lung regeneration, and recovery.
Lei Lei (she/her) PhD, Associate Research Scientist (from May 2025)
Jamison Leid PhD (he/him), Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Jamison completed his Ph.D. in developmental biology in Kory Lavine’s laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis. His thesis focused on identifying a metabolic derangement phenotype underlying the progression of TAFopathy - a developmental syndrome caused by pathological variants in the TATA Binding Protein Associated Factor protein family that is characterized by intellectual disability, craniofacial deformaties, and congenital heart defects. He has a wide range of published works from his postbaccalaureate research fellowships working on Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease and Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis, Dilated Cardiomyopathy, and immune cell functions in the context of cardiac injury and cardiogenesis. His most notable works include his first author publication in Circulation Research on the role of embryonic macrophages in remodeling the coronary plexus, and his first author publication in OpenBio identifying a secondary role for general transcription factors in regulating metabolic programming during zebrafish embryonic development. His research interests are in understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying in situ organ regeneration, with a secondary interest in understanding how innate immune cell populations can help coordinate these events
Martina Parigi MSc Postgraduate Research Associate (visiting)
Martina is a visiting PhD student in Dr Chiara Sassoli’s lab in the Dept. of Experimental and clinica medicine section of human Anatomy and Histology Imaging platform at Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy. Her project is focused on evaluate the effects of a treatment of red photobiomodulaion on in vitro and ex-vivo models of skeletal muscle in healthy and damaged conditions. She’s a member of Stem Cell research Italy (SCRI) and Italian Society of Anatomy and Histology (SIAI). During her bachelor’s thesis she focused on colorectal cancer immunotherapy, while during her master’s degree thesis she select a cell population clonal, to develop a reliable cellular model for the in vitro study of the process amyloidogenic, underlying neuronal degeneration.
Zachary B. Saracino BSc, Postgraduate Research Associate
Zach obtained his B.S. in biochemistry and music minor May 2022 and M.S. in molecular and cell biology the following May with a pre-med concentration. During his college studies, Zach conducted multidisciplinary research in the Goodman, Bandaranayake, and Hanlon labs on characterization of levitated microparticles in a linear Paul trap, purification and characterization of LDH for lab development, and characterization of Drosophila GPCRs during development, respectively. Aside from studies, Zach was co-president of the MMA Club, timpanist in the QU Symphony, and a CAS student council representative. He also worked as an undergrad/grad biochem peer fellow, chem study table mentor, and work-study and pillar leader/mentor for the Quinnipiac University Honors program.
Overall view of the Mission Operations Control Room in the Mission Control Center, bldg 30, during the lunar surface extravehicular activity (EVA) of Apollo 11 Astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. NASA