I am the Director of the Liver Research Program at the University of Illinois Chicago. I am actively involved in the Center for Alcohol Research, in the T32 Training Grants from the Cancer Center and the Department of Endocrinology, and in mentoring Graduate students and Postdoctoral fellows. In addition, I hold leadership roles at the American Association for the Studies of Liver Diseases (Steering Committee, Liver Fibrosis SIG) and the International Society for the Hepatic Sinusoid Research (2022-2024 President-Elect). 

During my Postdoctoral training in Dr. Rojkind’s Laboratory at the Marion Bessin Liver Research Center (Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York) and in Dr. Cederbaum’s Laboratory at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York), my focus centered on the role of oxidative stress, inflammation, and extracellular matrix in the pathogenesis of chronic liver disease. I developed significant expertise in crosstalk among liver cells, which remains the primary focus of my research. Importantly, I have worked in the field of HMGB1 and OPN for over 15 years, and my laboratory has developed novel tools and pre-clinical mouse models to study the role of these two proteins in different cell populations in the liver.