Kravets Lab's journey began at the Department of Bioengineering (jointly with Department of Pediatrics). We are located at the PFBH 461. Motivated students and postdoctoral fellows are welcome to contact us for available positions!

David Ramirez, Ph.D visited the Kravets Lab.

He has accepted the offer to join the lab and is coming back in July as a Postdoctoral Fellow. 

Dr. Ramirez will investigate the role of beta cell networks and functional heterogeneity in type 1 diabetes and in healthy pancreatic tissue.

Wellcome, David! We are so glad you are now a part of the team!

Dr. Kravets received a Pilot and Feasibility Award from the UCSD/UCLA Diabetes Research Center to study role of glucose and fatty acids on heterogeneous metabolism patterns in pancreatic islets of Langerhans. We will apply multi-photon microscopy to image function and metabolic signatures at the cellular level in healthy and diabetic conditions to see whether some cell subpopulations are more vulnerable to metabolic stress.

Dr. David Ramirez receives an Integrated Islet Distribution Program (IIDP)'s Data Resource Trainee Scholar Award. He will be studying how alpha and beta cell function and coverage in pancreatic islets relates to loss of the first phase insulin secretion in human donors with different stages of diabetes. Congratulations, David!

Nirmala Balasenthilkumaran, Ph.D student presented our new work on insulitis. He shows that alpha-cell-rich regions in the pancreatic islets of diabetic mice are preferentially targeted by immune cells. A wonderful collaboration with the Friedman Group, CU Denver. 

This work was presented at the Annual Pediatrics Research Symposium, School of Medicine, UCSD. Congratulations on a first poster and exciting discovery!