Scientific Advisory Board
Andy Chan, M.D., Ph.D. (Chair)
Member since 2022
Genentech, A Member of the Roche Group
Dr. Andrew Chan is Senior Vice President of Research-Biology at Genentech, Inc (GNE) where he has overseen biological research in oncology, immunology, neuroscience, infectious diseases, and biotherapeutic discovery for over the past decade. He is an accomplished leader in target discovery, drug discovery, and drug development. In his role, he has governance responsibilities over both GNE’s research and clinical portfolio through Phase 2 proof-of-concept studies.
Dr. Chan is a leader in biotherapeutics and has authored key reviews for academic and biopharmaceutical communities integrating lessons learned about disease pathogenesis and mechanisms of therapy. He is also a leader in advocating and implementing precision medicine strategies through biomarker discovery and development. Dr. Chan’s laboratory focuses on how our immune systems protect us against foreign pathogens yet can cause autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. He has published over 100 research papers, review articles and books. Dr. Chan himself is a co-inventor of ocrelizumab (Ocrevus™), the first B-cell directed therapy approved by the FDA for treatment of both relapsing and progressive forms of multiple sclerosis.
Dr. Chan plays key roles to bridge academia, patient advocacy, and industry. He presently serves as Chair of the Executive Advisory Board of the Chemistry Life Processes Institute (Northwestern University), member of the National Council at Washington University School of Medicine, and member of the Biopharma Advisory Board at Washington University. He is member of the National Medical and Scientific Advisory Board of the Arthritis Foundation and the Lupus Research Alliance. He is also Chair of the Medical and Scientific Committee of the San Francisco Arthritis Foundation.
Dr. Chan received his B.A. and M.S. degrees in chemistry at Northwestern University and M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Washington University (WUSM). He completed his internal medicine residency at Barnes Hospital and rheumatology fellowship at UCSF. He joined the faculty at WUSM in the Departments of Medicine and Pathology and was a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is an elected member of the American Association of Physicians, American Society for Clinical Investigation, Henry Kunkel Society and a Pew Scholar. He is recipient of the Lee Howley Sr Prize in arthritis research, the Northwestern alumni medal, the Washington University School of Medicine Alumni Achievement award, the American Federation for Aging Research Chairman’s Award of Distinction, and the Guin Warnock Award from the Arthritis Foundation. He is also presently Associate Professor of Medicine at UCSF.
Laurent Arnaud, M.D., Ph.D.
Member since 2023
Strasbourg University & Academic Hospitals, France
Dr. Laurent Arnaud is full a Professor of Rheumatology at Strasbourg University & Academic Hospitals, France. He obtained his medical degree and a PhD in immunology from Paris University. His main clinical interests focus on the care of patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE). He is leading a research group focusing on innovative strategies to study the epidemiology of autoimmune diseases, with a particular interest for the use of novel diagnostic and therapeutic digital strategies based on big data and Artificial Intelligence.
With his team at the French National Reference Center for Rare Autoimmune Diseases of Strasbourg (CRMR RESO), he has published more than 200 articles in the field of rare diseases. Professor Arnaud is currently the President of the European Lupus Society (SLEuro) and Disease Coordinator for Lupus and relapsing polychondritis of the European Reference Network for rare diseases ReCONNET. He is the curator of a twitter account (@Lupusreference) about lupus education, followed by more than 12k people.
Roberto Caricchio, M.D.
Member since 2023
UMass Chan Medical School
Dr. Caricchio is the Myles J. McDonough Chair in Rheumatology and Chief of the Division of Rheumatology at UMass Chan Medical School. He earned his M.D. and completed his rheumatology fellowship at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome, Italy. He completed two postdoctoral research fellowships at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. After a decade of high impact research in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), he undertook additional clinical training in internal medicine and rheumatology at Temple University to fulfill his call as physician-scientist. While in training, he continued to lead a NIH-funded laboratory focused on investigating the pathogenesis of SLE.
Before moving to UMass Chan, he directed the Temple Lupus Program in Philadelphia and provided access to a specialized program and to numerous clinical trials to indigent patients in north Philadelphia, one of the poorest areas in USA. He has since established the UMass Lupus Center, providing the local community advanced lupus care and access to clinical trials.
Dr. Caricchio has made important contributions to our understanding of the pathogenesis of SLE and is considered among the leading investigators in his field. He published seminal papers in elucidating the role of cell death as stimulator in autoimmunity, the role of sex hormones in manipulating cell death, tissue damage and the immune response, and more recently, the role of the microbiome and bacterial infections in driving autoimmune severity. His laboratory has been supported by the NIH, Arthritis Foundation, Lupus Foundation, and the Lupus Research Alliance.
Dr. Caricchio has published in Immunity, Journal of Immunology, Nature and JAMA, in addition to authoring editorials, reviews and book chapters all focused on SLE. He has been active nationally with the American College of Rheumatology as well as the Lupus Foundation of America and the Lupus Research Alliance and served on the editorial board of Arthritis and Rheumatology and Arthritis, Research and Therapy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he developed a strategic therapeutic approach for patients with COVID-19-induced cytokine storm and led international trials to prevent this lethal complication.
In his current position he is developing a number of specialized programs at UMass Chan, including the lupus program, early arthritis program and CTD-ILD program, where patients are offered innovative therapies and the opportunity to participate to breakthrough clinical trials and translational research. Dr. Caricchio continues to have an active research laboratory focused on infectious triggers of lupus and prevention of end-organ damage in lupus nephritis. He practices rheumatology, supervising rheumatology fellows and focusing on lupus comprehensive care.
Kate Fitzgerald, Ph.D.
Member since 2024
UMass Chan Medical School
Dr. Fitzgerald is Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School where she also serves as Vice Provost for Basic Science Research. Dr. Fitzgerald is the founding Co-Director of the Program in Innate Immunity and runs an internationally recognized research program focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms driving inflammation in Infectious and inflammatory diseases. In particular her group has a long-standing interest in nucleic acid sensors (especially those that recognize double stranded DNA) and inflammasomes and how these pathways and mechanisms drive innate immune activation in infectious, inflammatory, and autoimmune diseases.
Dr. Fitzgerald received her B.Sc. in Biochemistry in 1995 from University College Cork, Ireland and her PhD in Biochemistry in 1999 from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. After a post-doctoral fellowship at Trinity College Dublin, she joined UMass Chan and has remained at Umass Chan rising through the ranks to a tenured Professor as well as her leadership roles.
Dr. Fitzgerald is an elected member of the Royal Irish Academy, the National Academy of Sciences (USA), the National Academy of Medicine (USA) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as an elected fellow of the American Society of Microbiology. She is the recipient of several awards including the Thermo-Fischer Meritorious Career Award (from the American Association of Immunology), the Saint Patrick’s Day Medal (from the Irish Government and Science Foundation Ireland) and the Milstein Award for Excellence in Interferon and Cytokine research (from the International Cytokine and Interferon Society), amongst others.
She has extensive service both locally at UMass Chan as well as nationally including service on local and national advisory boards (e.g., NIAID Board of Scientific Councillors, the Cancer Research Institute and the Smith Odyssey Foundation). She was also the recent past President of the International Cytokine and Interferon Society. She is also a scientific co-founder of a Related Sciences company Danger Bio and serves on the scientific advisory board of a number of biotechs and Pharma.
Nancy Mize Gonzalez
Member since 2023
Texas A&M School of Medicine
Nancy Mize Gonzalez is an M.D./Ph.D. candidate at Texas A&M School of Medicine, in the fourth year of the program, currently in the Ph.D. phase of training. Gonzalez earned a B.A. in music from Shorter College, with First Honors summa cum laude. Originally an aspiring concert pianist, Gonzalez became deeply motivated to study biomedical science to help family members who deal with lupus, vasculitis, and other overlapping autoimmune diseases.
After completing undergraduate training and working for a few years as professional choral musician, Gonzalez enrolled in post-baccalaureate science classes at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2016, joining the Yoder Lab to learn essential skills for hypothesis-driven research, and garnering 5 co-author publications on T cells in polycystic kidney disease as a result. In 2018, Gonzalez was accepted to the MD/PhD program at Texas A&M School of Medicine.
In Spring 2021, as a second year medical student, Gonzalez joined the Wenhao Chen lab at the Houston Methodist Research Institute, studying T cell-directed therapies in lupus models. Gonzalez’s overall research goal is to develop highly-effective therapeutics for neuropsychiatric lupus.
At Texas A&M, Nancy Gonzalez serves as Vice President for the school’s chapter of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS), and is a member of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS), Women in Neurological Surgery (WINS), and the Association of Women Surgeons (AWS). Active in the lupus community, Gonzalez is an executive member of the Lupus Research Alliance Young Leaders Board. As a professional musician, Gonzalez has sung with Coro Vocati, Peachtree Road United Methodist Chamber Choir, Music City Baroque, and has been a soprano soloist at St. Paul’s Cathedral and at the Amherst Early Music Festival. Gonzalez has earned the Robert & Annabelle Bruce Travel Grant, the Presser Foundation Scholarship, and the Alfred Shorter Competitive Academic Scholarship. After medical school, Gonzalez aspires to match to a surgical residency and work as a surgeon-scientist, staying highly engaged in translational research.
Arezou Khosroshahi, M.D.
Member since 2025
Emory University
Dr. Arezou Khosroshahi is a rheumatologist and clinician-investigator in the Division of Rheumatology at Emory University, where she also serves as the Director of Clinical Trials. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Emory School of Medicine. She obtained her medical degree from Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran. She then completed her Internal Medicine Residency at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, Columbia University, and her Rheumatology Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. After her training, she pursued advanced research in clinical methodologies and became actively involved in clinical research.Dr. Khosroshahi’s research program focuses on advancing therapeutic approaches for autoimmune diseases, with a particular emphasis on systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD), as well as other complex systemic autoimmune conditions. She has served as the principal investigator on more than 20 clinical trials in SLE and IgG4-RD and as a co-investigator on over 25 lupus studies. Her work seeks to elucidate the mechanisms driving disease pathogenesis and to evaluate the efficacy of novel treatment modalities, including biologics and innovative cell-based therapies.Since joining Emory in 2012, Dr. Khosroshahi has been providing comprehensive care for lupus patients at the Grady Lupus Clinic and has established a new Lupus Clinic at the Emory Clinic, where she collaborates closely with the Lowance Center for Human Immunology to study the pathophysiology of lupus and advance treatment approaches. Her expertise spans large-scale observational studies and clinical trials, including cutting-edge CAR T-cell therapy trials for autoimmune diseases, a pioneering approach in the field.Dr. Khosroshahi’s work in IgG4-RD has led to the development of classification criteria, management guidance, and, more recently, the first international randomized clinical trial in IgG4-RD, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).She is actively engaged in national and international research collaborations and her research has been featured in prominent journals such as Nature and Nature Immunology. She has been a member of the Trial Design, Biomarkers, and Outcome Measures Committee for the Lupus Clinical Investigators Network (LuCIN) of the LRA since 2016 and lead Co-investigator for Lupus Landmark study. She also participates in educational initiatives aimed at mentoring the next generation of clinician-scientists in rheumatology.Dr. Khosroshahi’s contributions to research and clinical care have been widely recognized. She received the title of Distinguished Physician at the Emory School of Medicine in 2020 and has been honored with several prestigious awards, including the Best Mentor Award and the Hidden Gem Award at Emory University. She has been selected as an Atlanta Top Doctor every year since 2016.Through her clinical care and research efforts, Dr. Khosroshahi remains committed to pushing the boundaries of innovation in autoimmune disease treatment and improving outcomes for patients worldwide.Andrea Knight, M.D.
Member since 2023
Associate Professor. The Hospital for Sick Children
Dr. Andrea Knight is a pediatric rheumatologist and clinician-investigator in the Division of Rheumatology, and an Associate Scientist in the Neurosciences and Mental Health Program at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, Canada. She is also an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Associated Faculty of the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. She obtained her medical degree from the Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons in New York. She then completed her Paediatric Residency and Paediatric Rheumatology Fellowship at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Knight’s research program seeks to understand the impact of neuropsychiatric morbidity on outcomes for children and youth with rheumatologic disease. She is currently conducting translational research to understand the impact of childhood-onset SLE (cSLE) on brain health and development, utilizing neuroimaging, cognitive, and blood biomarkers to characterize the mechanisms underlying neuropsychiatric dysfunction. The goal is to develop and test systematic approaches utilizing multi-level biomarkers for early detection and targeted, individualized treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders in SLE. She is also developing and testing strategies to improve assessment and intervention for psychiatric morbidity, such as tailored cognitive behavioral therapy, to optimize outcomes for children and youth with rheumatologic conditions.
Dr. Knight is also leading several international research efforts in pediatric lupus and rheumatology. She is the current Chair of the Lupus Section for the Childhood Arthritis & Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA), and Co-leader of the CARRA Mental Health Workgroup. She is the Co-PI on a CDC-funded award to examine epidemiology and outcomes in the CARRA lupus registry cohort. She also recently served as an appointed member on the Committee for the Assessment of National Institutes of Health Research on Autoimmune Diseases (2020-2022) at the United States National Academy of Science in the department of Engineering and Medicine.
Dr. Knight’ work has been recognized by an awarded Chair for the Canada Research Tier 2 for Mental Health in Childhood Chronic Disease at the Canada Institute of Health Research. She is also the recipient of the Lupus Research Alliance Career Development Award to Promote Diversity in Lupus Research, the Lupus Foundation of America Mary Betty Stevens MD Young Investigator Prize, and the Edmond L Dubois Memorial Lectureship and Investigator Award from the Rheumatology Research Foundation.
Jason Williams
Member since 2022
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Jason Williams is Assistant Director, Inclusion and Research Readiness at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory DNA Learning Center where he develops national biology education programs. Jason leads education, outreach, and training for CyVerse (US national cyberinfrastructure for the life sciences) and has trained thousands of students, researchers and educators in bioinformatics, data science, and molecular biology. Jason’s focus has been developing bioinformatics in undergraduate education and career-spanning learning for biologists. Jason is founder of LifeSciTrainers.org – a global effort to promote community of practice among professionals who develop short-format training for life scientists. Jason is advisory to cyberinfrastructure, bioinformatics, and education projects and initiatives in the US, UK, Europe, and Australia. He is also a teacher at the Yeshiva University High School for Girls.
Julie Zikherman, M.D.
Member since 2025
University of California, San FranciscoDr. Julie Zikherman is Professor in the Department of Medicine at UCSF and serves as Associate Chief for Basic Research in the Division of Rheumatology as well as co-PI of the Rheumatology T32 training grant. She earned her M.D at Cornell and trained in internal medicine and rheumatology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and at UCSF. She is a clinically active rheumatologist, but reserves the majority of her effort for basic immunology research. Her laboratory focuses on antigen receptor signaling, molecular mechanisms of immune tolerance, and regulation of adaptive immune responses. She is committed to training and education in the realms of medicine, rheumatology, and immunology. In addition to training young scientists in her laboratory, she has also served on many mentorship, career development, and thesis committees for trainees outside of her laboratory at UCSF. She is Chair for the standing Physician-Scientist Search Committee in the Department of Medicine, and participates in the multi-departmental Physician-Scientist Development Program and serves on the steering committee of the UCSF-wide Physician-Scientist Scholar Program. Dr. Zikherman has served in an ad hoc capacity on NIH and Rheumatology Research Foundation study sections, and is a current standing member of the Adaptive Immunity (formerly CMIB) NIH study section. She is also a member of ASCI, and has co-organized international meetings including B cell Keystone 2022 and FASEB Immunoreceptors 2026.