Graduate Students

Kaeden is originally from Atlanta, GA, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in cell and molecular biology from Duke University in 2025. While at Duke, he worked in Dr. Micah Luftig’s lab, studying how Epstein-Barr virus rewires B cell metabolism to drive tumorigenesis. During his undergrad, he helped uncover novel roles for fatty acid desaturation and SIRT2 activity in B cell malignancies and primary B cell proliferation. He also spent some time at the Rockefeller University and Zanzibar, Tanzania, studying germinal center B cell dynamics and malaria disease ecology, respectively.

Born and raised in a small town in central Italy, Leonardo earned his BSc in Biotechnology and MSc in Molecular Biology and Genetics as a student of Ghislieri College at the University of Pavia. He conducted research at the AIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology (IFOM-ETS) in Dr. d'Adda di Fagagna's lab, studying the role of the DNA damage response in the aging process of N. furzeri. During his msater's, he also worked on a technology development project at the National Research Council of Italy (IGM CNR) under the supervision of Dr. Crespan. He then joined Prof.

Ayantu grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia before moving to the US for her undergrad studies. She completed her BS/MSc in Biochemistry at Brandeis University, where she studied under Prof Dorothee Kern investigating the differential regulation and evolution of two tyrosine receptor kinases, Src and Abl. After college, she joined the cell pharmacology team at C4 therapeutics where she further developed her interests in translational oncology. She joined the Harvard-MIT MD/PhD program in 2019 and is currently pursuing her PhD in Immunology.

Xutong is a PhD student in the Immunology program and is co-mentored between Drs. Marcia Haigis and Vijay Kuchroo laboratories. She completed her BS/MS at Johns Hopkins University, where she studied mitochondrial metabolism in CD8 T cell exhaustion under the supervision of Dr. Erika Pearce. She is currently interested in investigating the epigentic and metabolic drivers in T cell aging. 

Hobbies: horror movies, jigsaw puzzles 

Hyunji is a Ph.D. student in the BBS program and is co-mentored between Drs. Marcia Haigis and Miao Cui laboratories. Born and raised in South Korea, she completed her BSc and MSc at University of Seoul. She studied plasmonic nanoparticles for bio-sensing and bio-imaging during her master’s under the supervision of Dr. Inhee Choi. After that, she worked as a research trainee in the lab of Dr. Luke P.

Yutong (Mary) received her bachelor’s degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She did her undergraduate research in the Johnson Lab, working on antibody-polymer conjugates for cancer treatments. She is currently interested in integrating chemical methods to study metabolite signaling.

Hobbies: traveling, playing board game!

Peter is a PhD student in the HMS Immunology program and is co-mentored between the Haigis and Sharpe laboratories. He is interested in understanding the metabolic determinants of effective anti-tumor immunity and metabolic usage of CD8⁺ T cells in the settings of cancer and aging. Previously Peter worked as an industry scientist at Merck Research Laboratories where he supported the pre-clinical development of several immunotherapeutic agents across the early discovery pipeline.

Roberta was raised in a seaside town in southern Italy, but ended up studying medicine in one of the foggiest cities of northern Italy (Pavia). As an Armenise-Harvard Summer Fellow, she works with Jaime on a project about metabolic rewiring in resistant lung cancer.

“Fun” fact: She lives 1 hour away from the lab because she kept mistaking Harvard Campus with Harvard Medical School while searching for houses on Google Maps

Originally from Mexico, Erick is now a student in the Chemical Biology Ph.D. program at Harvard. Departing from an analytical chemistry background and a broad interest in cellular metabolism and human disease, Erick’s efforts are currently focused in dissecting the biological and chemical features of different oncometabolites. His studies are generously funded by Fundación Mexico en Harvard and Mexico’s National Council for Science and Technology (CONACyT).  

Happy Place: Lamont Library at Harvard Yard. Proudly, a Lamonster.

Oscar hails from Guayaquil, a city on the coast of Ecuador. He pursued his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked on ways to engineer substrate-specific and potentiated variants of the yeast disaggregase Hsp104 in the lab of James Shorter. In the Haigis Lab, Oscar is interested in understanding how different cellular states lead to metabolic reprogramming as to coordinate lipid homeostasis and how cellular pathologies arise when such processes go awry.