Kate was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. She graduated with a B.S. in Animal Sciences from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Spring 2024. During her undergraduate studies, she was involved in two immunology labs on campus. She continued her education in Fall 2024 at UIUC as a Ph.D. student in Dr. Won’s lab. She is working to understand the therapeutic potential of regulatory T cells during autoimmune myocarditis induced in mouse models.
Yushan Liu was born in China and earned her B.S. in Biology from Illinois Wesleyan University in 2021. As an undergraduate, she worked in Dr. Tyler Schwend’s lab, using the embryonic chick as a model to study corneal regeneration. She went on to receive her M.S. in the Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology within the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where she worked in Dr. Sayeepriyadarshini Anakk’s lab investigating the relationship between bile acid synthesis, obesity, and adipogenesis. Yushan is now pursuing her Ph.D. in the Department of Pathobiology at the College of Veterinary Medicine in UIUC. In the Won lab, her research focuses on elucidating the mechanisms underlying lupus myocarditis, with an emphasis on cardiac myosin–specific autoreactive T cells.
A fun fact: Yushan has a blue-tongued skink as a pet.
Yu Fan was born in Taipei, Taiwan. She earned her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree in 2020 and her Master of Science (M.S.) in Pathobiology in 2022 from National Chung Hsing University. During her undergraduate and master’s training, she focused on swine disease and vaccination serological surveillance, the detection of emerging swine pathogens—including porcine circovirus types 3 and 4—and diagnostic approaches for swine diseases. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Dr. Won’s lab, where her research investigates the role of T cells in immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI)-associated Sjögren’s syndrome, with the goal of identifying T cell-specific peptides involved in disease pathogenesis.