Welcome to the Reina Lab

Miguel Reina-Campos Ph.D.

Reina-Campos, originally from Barcelona, Spain, is a biochemist specializing in cancer cell biology and immunology. Reina-Campos completed his Ph.D. in Biomedical Research in the laboratory of Jorge Moscat, Ph.D. and Maria T. Diaz-Meco, Ph.D., at Sanford Burnham Prebys, followed by a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the laboratory of Ananda Goldrath, Ph.D., at the University of California, San Diego.

Principal Investigator

miguel@lji.org

Meet the Team

Violante Olivari

Postdoctoral Fellow
Violante completed her Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan, Italy. Fascinated by how T cells adapt to different environments in the body, she joined the Reina Lab aiming to uncover mechanisms and contribute to the development of novel immunotherapies for prostate cancer.
Masato Hirota

Postdoctoral Fellow
Masato completed his PhD in Immunology at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. During his PhD, he studied how T cells adapt to plasma membrane damage stress. This led to his broader interest in how T cells adapt to different tissue environments.
At the Reina lab, he will study how intestinal T cells respond to dietary nutritional signals.
Xinjian Cen

BMS PhD Student
Xinjian recently received her bachelor’s degree in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology from UCLA, where she conducted her undergraduate research on iPSC-derived CAR-T immunotherapy. She is currently a 1st year BMS PhD student in the Reina Lab studying the effects of lipid metabolism on tissue residency and function of T cells.
Harrison Ma

BISB PhD Student
Harrison is a 1st year BISB student in the Reina Lab focusing on applying new spatial transcriptomics techniques to map T-cell response in a spatial context.
Vida Luna

Lab Manager & Research Tech II
Vida is a Research Tech II who received a bachelor’s degree in biology from UC San Diego. She received undergraduate and post-grad research training in Ananda Goldrath’s Lab at UCSD. She is pursing a career in medicine and is preparing to apply to medical school.
Diva Sansanwal

Research Tech II
Diva Sansanwal is a recent graduate with a master’s degree in bioengineering from UC San Diego, where she conducted research on cancer biology in the Cheresh Lab. She is now exploring the tumor microenvironment through an immunology lens, leveraging advanced tools such as spatial transcriptomics. Diva is also in the process of applying to PhD programs.
Ethan Xu

Computational Intern
Ethan is an undergraduate student at UCSD majoring in computer science with a specialization in bioinformatics working on the analysis of spatial transcriptomics datasets as well as other computational tasks.
Jack Cloud

Computational Intern
Jack is an undergraduate student at UCLA studying Computational and Systems Biology with a specialization in bioinformatics working in conjunction with the Ay Lab to learn about spatial transcriptomics and epigenetic methods of analysis.
Leichu Liang

Student Trainee
Leichu Liang is an undergraduate student at UCSD, majoring in Molecular and Cell Biology with a minor in Chemistry. Her research interests focus on immunotherapy and its applications in targeting tumor cells. She aspires to work in the pharmaceutical industry in the future. Outside of research, she enjoys collecting succulent plants and fishing.
Krisha Bhai

Student Trainee
Krisha joins us from Emory and will stay with us for the summer working under Violante’s mentorship.

Lab Alumni

Livia Iacobelli

Lab Assistant
Undergraduate student at Johns Hopkins University studying Molecular and Cellular Biology. Supported wet lab projects with an emphasis on Histology.
Kelly Wang

LJIdea Intern
Undergraduate student at UCSD majoring in Molecular and Cell Biology with a minor in Chemistry. Focused on learning more about CD8 T-cell dynamics.
Yanni Zhu

Staff Scientist
Yanni got her Ph.D. from Tufts University and did her postdoctoral training in translational cancer Immunotherapy at Harvard and UCLA.
Johan Consuegra-Sierra

Masters Intern
Johan is a master’s student in Vaccines and Biotherapeutics at IPN-Mexico. Johan is eager to deepen his understanding and contribute to this exciting area of research.
Carol Behm

Research Admin Assistant
Carol provided support to several of the faculty and their respective labs.