Dr. Gonzalez-mayda
In that tradition of giving back, Dr. Gonzalez-Mayda, who was born in Puerto Rico and is bilingual, decided to volunteer one weekend a month at Casa de Salud, a local nonprofit clinic, seeing rheumatology patients. She has also helped reach out to physicians in Columbia who have been dealing with a CHIKV epidemic, collaborating with Jonathan Miner, MD, PhD, to process blood and tissue samples of patients afflicted with the viral infection. “This can help us learn more about this serious infection with potentially devastating long-term consequences,” says Dr. Gonzalez-Mayda.
Dr. Lenschow believes that such innovations as the newly established Center for Human Immunology and Immunotherapy, directed by Robert Schreiber, PhD, will create “further opportunities for conducting human and translational research to link clinical immunology with the basic science that is so strong here.”