Meet the Principal Investigator
Lenette Lu M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Internal Medicine
Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine
Department of Immunology
Lenette was born in Shanghai and grew up in San Francisco.She earned her bachelor’s degree in Swarthmore College’s Honors Program, with a major in biology and minor in Asian studies, studying yeast cell-cycle regulation in the laboratory of Dr. Elizabeth Vallen.
She earned her doctoral and medical degrees at Case Western Reserve University, where she studied dsRNA-mediated innate immunity in viral infections under Dr. Ganes Sen. She completed her internal medicine residency at Weill Cornell Medicine and her fellowship in infectious diseases at Partners HealthCare (now Mass General Brigham).
Her postdoctoral research focused on humoral immune responses to Mycobacterium tuberculosis, with Dr. Sarah Fortune at the Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health and Dr. Galit Alter at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard.
Lenette joined the UT Southwestern faculty in 2019. Her lab researches the mechanisms by which antibodies function in infectious diseases and vaccines. She also provides clinical care at Parkland Health & Hospital System.
Current Lab Members
Pei Lu, Ph.D.
Research Associate
Infectious Diseases & Geographic Medicine
Pei Lu joined Lu Lab as a Research Associate in 2019. She earned a Ph.D in Microbiology at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy Sciences in 2012. She is interested in identifying the antibodies features which involving in tuberculosis control.
Arabella Martin, B.S.
Graduate Student
Immunology
Arabella earned her Bachelor of Science in microbiology with honors from The University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK. Throughout her undergraduate research career, she was able to explore many research areas from studying the mechanism of cell death evasion by Human papillomavirus (HPV) to the unique energy production pathway utilized by the anaerobic organism, Syntrophus aciditrophicus. In addition to her work at OU, Arabella is also an alumni of the UT Southwestern Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) where she completed two summer programs under Dr. Kevin Forsberg studying bacterial and evolved eukaryotic mechanisms of bacteriophage defense. In 2026, she joined the Lu lab, where her research focuses on understanding how antibody features and functions modulate outcomes of tuberculosis (TB) and HIV-TB disease.
Nowrosh Islam, Ph.D.
Research Assistant II
Infectious Diseases & Geographic Medicine
Nowrosh Islam joined the Lu Lab as a Research Assistant in 2024. She earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Texas at Arlington. Her research focuses on antibody-mediated immune responses to Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), with a particular interest in understanding how IgG glycosylation influences host protection against tuberculosis. Her work combines immunology, microbiology, and host–pathogen interactions to better understand mechanisms of immune defense against Mtb infection.
Lab Alumni
Justin Greisz
Green Fellow 2020
Medical student
University of Pennsylvania
Perelman School of Medicine
Nabeeha Qazi
Green Fellow 2022
Undergraduate
Biochemistry Major
University of Texas at Dallas
Ye jin Kang
Assistant Instructor 2021 - 2023
Pediatric Infectious Disease Fellow
University of Pennsylvania
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Ann McDonald
Research Assistant 2021 - 2023
Gabriella Kalantar
Postdoctoral Researcher 2023
Joshua Miles
Ph.D. Student 2026
Immunology Graduate Program
Gabrielle Lessen
Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) Student
Immunology Graduate Program