Nam Woo Cho, MD, PhD is a radiation oncologist who specializes in the treatment of lung and cutaneous malignancies. Nam Woo received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College, and MD/PhD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, and completed his residency in radiation oncology at UCSF. He trained with Dr. Roger Greenberg at Penn for his graduate work studying DNA repair in cancer, and Dr. Matt Spitzer at UCSF for postdoctoral fellowship studying immune responses against cancer. His research focuses on the intersection of anticancer immunity and biological responses to ionizing radiation.

Courtney Tamaki is a graduate student in the Biomedical Sciences Program. She received her BS from UC Berkeley, majoring in Molecular and Cellular Biology with an emphasis in Genetics and Genomics. She is interested in systems immunology, and is currently studying the tumor surfaceome, specifically targeting proteins upregulated in response to various stimuli, aiming to identify markers to increase efficiency for combination therapy and immune cell engineering therapies. In her down time, Courtney enjoys playing basketball, chatting with friends, and bird watching.

Yang Xu is a postdoctoral fellow in the Cho lab and Spitzer lab. She earned her B.S. from China Pharmaceutical University and her M.S. in pharmacology from the University of Michigan, where she studied breast cancer cell-mediated neutrophil chemotaxis. She completed her Ph.D. in pharmacology at Michigan in the labs of Dr. Pierre Coulombe and Dr. Carole Parent, researching neutrophil infiltration in sterile skin inflammation and the role of keratin cytoskeletal proteins in epidermal cells in regulating neutrophil recruitment. As a postdoctoral researcher, Yang is interested in the inflammatory signaling within tumor microenvironments in response to immunotherapy and the tumor-immune cellular interactions.

Charlotte Chen is a Junior Specialist in the Cho Lab. Originally from Boston, she graduated with a BS in biochemistry from Tufts University in May 2024. During her time at Tufts, she gained hands-on experience in wet lab research in Dr. Jennifer Brown’s lab at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Avilar Therapeutics, a Lexington-based company focused on leveraging extracellular protein degradation to optimize drug delivery. Her current work in the Cho Lab involves establishing an in vitro system to efficiently detect and label T cells interacting with tumor cells within the tumor microenvironment. Charlotte’s research interests include adaptive immune cell signaling, tumor immunoediting, and gene editing for therapeutic applications. She is particularly excited to deepen her understanding of T cell signaling dynamics and their role in shaping immune responses to tumors. Outside of the lab, Charlotte enjoys walking, reading, and FaceTiming her dog back home in Boston.