Mark Rusznak, BA

Mark graduated from Pomona College in 2018 with a major in Chemistry. His college research and senior experimental thesis were focused on developing new synthetic approaches for sulfonamide compounds using sulfonyl fluorides and organometallic catalysts. After college, Mark spent one year in the Peebles Lab before matriculating into the Vanderbilt University Medical Scientist Training Program. During this year, Mark laid the groundwork for his graduate thesis project by identifying differences in innate allergic inflammation between strains of the Collaborative Cross recombinant inbred mouse resource. Mark and other lab mates utilized these phenotypic differences to map a quantitative trait locus on the mouse genome that associates with the proliferation of Group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2), which are important drivers of type 2 inflammation in response to aeroallergens. After re-joining the lab for his PhD in 2021, Mark continues his work investigating the gene candidates within this locus that might regulate ILC2 biology. His other projects involve studying the effect of prostaglandin I2 signaling on IL-10 producing ILC2 in the lung and understanding the pathophysiology of post-transplant diabetes mellitus that occurs after allogeneic bone-marrow transplantation.