Praise Chukwunalu Chukwuma

Praise "Chuks" Chukwunalu Chukwuma is a postdoctoral fellow in the Baker Lab. He hails from Nigeria, and prior to coming to the University of Notre Dame, he received his BA in Biochemistry from Wabash College and his PhD in Integrated Biomedical Sciences from Notre Dame. He is currently working on a project aimed at determining the antigenic specificities of alloreactive T cells involved in acute cellular rejection and the structural basis for such specificities. Contrary to current models of T cell alloreactivity, he is proposing that T cell allorecognition is specific, with features of allo-peptides and allo-MHCs influencing the specificity of alloreactive T cells. Additionally, he is investigating the possibility of viral cross-reactivity, given that recent studies suggest memory T cells may play a role in transplant rejection. The nature of his work requires the combination of concepts and techniques from transplantation immunology, biophysics, structural biology, and analytical chemistry.