Breakthrough Discovery Symposium II
Kelly Vaughn, Ph.D.
Department of Pediatrics
Chair, Breakthrough Discovery Symposium II
Alexis Bavencoffe, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology
Targeting the MIF signaling to alleviate chronic pain after spinal cord injury
Dr. Alexis Bavencoffe obtained his License, Master’s and PhD degrees from the University of Sciences and Technologies of Lille (France). Developing a strong interest in the roles of ion channels in the generation and maintenance of pain, Alexis came for his postdoctoral training to the Department of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology at McGovern Medical School in 2010. He worked first in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Zhu lab and thereafter joined Carmen Dessauer’s and Terry Walters’ labs where he became instructor and as of today Assistant Professor and TIRR Foundation Fellow.
Alexis’s research employs electrophysiological (patch-clamp) and behavioral approaches to define intracellular signaling pathways and neuroimmune signals that induce and maintain the pain-related nociceptor hyperactive state that drives neuropathic pain after spinal cord injury, chemotherapy, and peripheral nerve injury. Dr. Bavencoffe authored 23 scientific articles, 3 book chapters and over 45 communications at national and international meetings. Alexis’ work and laboratory is supported by the Mission Connect, a program of TIRR Foundation. He received also recently a fundable score on his RO1 grant to the NIH NINDS.
Juneyoung Lee, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Neurology
The gut microbiome and host metabolism in social isolation
Dr. Juneyoung Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology, McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston). He studied mucosal immunology in Dr. Hiroshi Kiyono’s laboratory in the Division of Mucosal Immunology, Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo and received his PhD in 2016. He completed his postdoctoral training in 2021 under the mentorship of Drs. Louise McCullough and Venugopal Venna in the Department of Neurology, McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston. Dr. Lee investigated the regulatory mechanisms of the microbiome-gut-brain axis in aging and stroke supported by the Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Lawrence M. Brass Stroke Research Award from the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American Brain Foundation. In 2021, he received the Career Development Award from the AHA and the UT Rising STARs Award from the University of Texas and started his independent research laboratory and career as a faculty member here at UTHealth Houston. As a member of the BRAINS Research Laboratory group, Dr. Lee’s Laboratory of Neuro-Mucosal Immunology explores (1) neuro-immune interactions, (2) host-microbe interactions, (3) inter-organ communication and (4) host metabolism in age-related neurological diseases (e.g., stroke, Alzheimer’s disease and cerebral amyloid angiopathy) and psychosocial stress (e.g., social isolation). His laboratory aims to interrogate the unknown mechanisms and target dysregulation in diseases with the goal of identifying novel therapeutic options using cutting-edge techniques, including flow cytometry, metagenomics, metabolomics, iPSC-derived organoids/assembloids, and scRNA-seq with spatial transcriptomics.
Diana Proctor, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics
Candida auris and the full ESKAPE: The skin as a reservoir for antibiotic resistance and transmission
Dr. Diana Proctor is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at UTHealth Houston’s McGovern Medical School. A native Texan, Dr. Proctor joined the faculty in October 2024 after completing postdoctoral research in microbial genomics at the National Institutes of Health’s National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, MD. Her research employs microbial genomics, from whole-genome sequencing to strain-resolved metagenomics, to study microbial dynamics in complex environments like the human microbiome, with a particular focus on the mycobiome.
Dr. Proctor earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University under the mentorship of Drs. David Relman and Susan Holmes. She holds an M.S. in Biological Sciences from Smith College, where she was awarded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency STAR Graduate Research Fellowship, and a B.A. in Microbiology and English Literature from Hampshire College.
In addition to her research, Dr. Proctor is dedicated to mentoring early-career scientists. She serves as a mentor to the Early Career Editorial Board at mBio, the flagship journal of the American Society for Microbiology, and as a reviewing editor for Microbiology Resource Announcements.