My long term research interests involve the development of a comprehensive understanding on the role of T cells in the initiation and maintenance of human and experimental autoreactivity.

As a Fulbright scholar in the USA, I focused on distilling the mechanisms of epitope-specific immune therapy in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). As a predoctoral student, in the Netherlands, my research focused on the dynamics of T cell reconstitution in children thymectomized within their first month of life and after stem cell transplantation for autoimmune diseases in humans and murine models. My findings identified a novel functional marker for recent thymic emigrants and significantly altered the concept of naïve T cells as developmentally synchronized and relatively homogeneous cell population and incited the need for a revision. The necessity of T cell help for the development of human B cell autoreactivity was further investigated in close collaboration with the Weizmann Institute of Science. Overall, this has skilled me in several clinical autoimmune diseases as well as techniques in cellular immunology in humans and mice.

My current research (supported by a Marie Curie Global Fellowship) builds logically on my prior work on the specific role of T cells in the development of B cell autoreactivity.