The Kischner lab is headed by Dr. Denise Kirshcner of the University of Michigan Medical School Microbiology and Immunolgy Department. The Linderman lab is headed by Dr. Jennifer Linderman of the University of Michigan Chemical Engineering department. This research is performed in collaboration with a variety of other labs:
Some of Dr. Linderman's graduate students have worked with Dr. Kunkel's lab to perform in vivo research of TB using murine models. The results of these experiments were used to determine model parameters and to help verify model results.
Dr. Flynn's lab performs in vivo TB research with mice and monkeys. The collaboration involves a dynamic interaction between experimental data produced by Dr. Flynn's lab that is used to direct the evolution of the Kirshner-Linderman TB models. The results of the simulation models are used by Dr. Flynn's lab to help determine the evolution of their experiments.
Dr. Kornfeld is pulmonologist in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine at the Universiy of Massacheussetts Worcester Medical School. His lab does research on the burst size of macrophages during pulomary infections. This is of interest to us to refine our TB immune models to more accurately reflect how many bacteria are required to burst a macrophage, as a probability distribution where each macropahge has a different burst size, rather than a single burst size threshold used for all macrophages in the simulation.