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Brian Miller, MD PhD
Principal Investigator

Brian is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and practicing oncologist. He received his AB from Princeton University and MD and PhD degrees from Washington University in St. Louis. He completed his post-doctoral fellowship with Drs. Nick Haining and Arlene Sharpe at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute / Harvard Medical School. His primary research focus is to understand the cellular mechanisms by which immunotherapy controls, or fails to control, tumor growth. During his free time, Brian enjoys chasing after his two small children, jogging, and cooking (sometimes edible) meals.

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Alex Bastian
Postdoctoral Scholar

Alex joined the Miller Lab in January of 2023. He received his PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from East Carolina University where he studied the interaction of dendritic cells and regulatory T cells in the context of autoimmunity in the lab of Dr. Mark Mannie. Outside the lab, he enjoys sports, hiking and traveling.

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Kelly Chong
Research Technician

Wan Lin (Kelly) Chong joined the Miller Lab in summer 2022 after completing her undergraduate degree in Biology at UNC Chapel Hill. During her undergraduate studies, Kelly worked in an onco-immunology lab at UNC to understand the molecular signals controlling T cell functions during cancer. When not in the lab, she can often be found perfecting her Japanese Cotton Cheesecake recipe and learning the guitar. Fun facts about Kelly are that she came from Malaysia, and she can speak three languages!  

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Emily Cox, MS
Research Specialist

Emily joined the Miller lab in February 2022 as a Research Specialist.  She completed her BS in Biology at UNC Wilmington and Masters in Biomedical Science at Texas Tech University, where she studied HIV envelope and co-receptor interactions. Outside of the lab, Emily enjoys baking and reading.

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Haiyang (Harry) Wang
Graduate Student

Harry joined the Miller lab in April 2023 (co-mentored by Dr. Hector Franco) as a graduate student in the Pharmacology curriculum. He graduated from Henan Agricultural University in 2018 with a B.E. in Bioengineering and then finished his master’s studies in biotechnology at Georgetown University in 2019. Before coming to UNC, Harry worked as a research assistant at Georgetown studying Multiple Sclerosis, Obesity and Ovarian Cancer. Outside the lab, Harry enjoys hiking, running, and trying new food.

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Vasyl Zhabotynsky, DrPh
Bioinformatics Scientist

Vasyl joined the Miller lab in December 2022 as a Bioinformatics Scientist.  He completed his DrPH in Biostatistics at UNC Chapel Hill with a specialization in statistical genetics. In his free time, he enjoys reading, music, movies, food, and scenery.

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Matthew Zimmerman
Graduate Student

Matt is a graduate student in the Cell Biology and Physiology curriculum that joined the Miller Lab in Spring 2022. He graduated from Salisbury University in 2018 with a B.S. in Biology and minors in Chemistry and Mathematics. Prior to beginning graduate school, Matt worked as a research technician studying combination cancer immunotherapies targeting the tumor microenvironment of lung squamous carcinoma in the lab of Dr. Chad Pecot at UNC Chapel Hill. His primary research focus is to uncover myeloid-cell dependent mechanisms of therapeutic resistance in cancer. Outside of lab, Matt enjoys running, hiking, and long walks with his dog Charlie!

Former Mentees

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Kate Vietor
Research Technician

Kate worked in the Miller Lab 2022-2024 as a research technician. She is now a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Rose Al Abosy
Research Technician

Rose worked as a research technician with Brian in Nick Haining’s lab studying subsets of exhausted CD8+ T cells. She is now a resident in ob/gyn at UWashington.

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Yacine Choutri
Research Technician

Yacine worked as a research technician with Brian in Arlene Sharpe’s lab studying resistance to anti-PD-1. He is now a graduate student at the University of Toronto.

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Jenna Collier
Graduate Student

Jenna is a former graduate student in Arlene Sharpe’s lab studying T-cell function in the context of autoimmunity, cancer, and immune-related adverse events that occur during checkpoint blockade immunotherapy. She now works at Genentech.

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Amy Huang
Computational Biologist

Amy is a computational biologist in Arlene Sharpe’s and David Liu’s labs analyzing single-cell and bulk RNA-seq datasets to understand PD-1 biology in tumors and autoimmune disease.

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Raphaelle Toubiana
Computational Biologist

Raphaelle worked with Brian and Dr. Meromit Singer during her master’s thesis at l’Ecole Polytechnique in France to study tumor-infiltrating myeloid cells using single-cell RNA-seq. She completed a master's degree in the Computational Biology and Quantitative Genetics program at Harvard University.

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Sarah Weiss
MD PhD Student

Sarah is an MD PhD student in Arlene Sharpe’s lab studying enhancer regulation of PD-1 in T cells.

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