Zigman Lab Members
Jeffrey Zigman, M.D., Ph.D.
Jeff was born in Pennsylvania, lived for a short time in Long Island, NY and then spent the remainder of his childhood in Essex County, NJ. He received a B.A. degree in Biological Sciences in 1989 from the School of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. He subsequently moved to Chicago to begin an 8 year-long combined M.D.-Ph.D. Program at the University of Chicago, with funding through the NIH Medical Scientist Training Program. Dr. Zigman's doctoral research on G-proteins in the pancreatic islets of Langerhans was performed in the laboratory of Donald F. Steiner, M.D., and he obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 1994. Dr. Zigman's M.D. degree was obtained from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine in 1997. Dr. Zigman completed an Internal Medicine residency (1997 - 2000) at the University of Chicago Hospitals and a combined research and clinical fellowship in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism (2000 - 2003) at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. During fellowship, Dr. Zigman performed research on ghrelin and the neuroanatomic basis of body weight homeostasis, in the laboratory of Joel K. Elmquist, D.V.M, Ph.D. He continued to work in Dr. Elmquist's laboratory, following fellowship, as a junior faculty member (Instructor) at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Zigman moved to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in January 2006 as an Instructor in the Department of Internal Medicine. He is now Assistant Professor and is currently affiliated with the Division of Hypothalamic Research, the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism and the Integrative Biology Graduate Program.
Ichiro Sakata, Ph.D. - Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Ichiro was born in Japan. He spent the majority of the last decade living in the city of Saitama, where he attended Saitama University as an undergraduate student, a graduate student and a postdoctoral fellow. Ichiro has been trained under the mentorship of Dr. Takafumi Sakai, and has focused his studies on the regulation of gastric ghrelin expression. He has several publications with Dr. Sakai and Dr. Kenji Kangawa regarding his work with ghrelin. Dr. Sakata arrived in the U.S. at the end of February, 2007 to begin his second postdoctoral fellowship, in Dr. Zigman's lab.
Mario Perello, Ph.D. - Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Mario was born in Pehuajo (Buenos Aires, Argentina). In 1994 he moved to La Plata to attend the School of Exact Sciences at La Plata University. At La Plata, he received undergraduate degrees in Chemistry (1998) and Biochemistry (2000), followed by a Ph.D. in Biochemistry (2003) and an M.S. in Endocrinology (2004). Mario’s Ph.D. and M.S. theses were performed in the laboratory of Dr. Eduardo Spinedi, and were focused on leptin’s regulation of the adrenal axis (Ph.D. thesis) and on the role of estrogens in the acute response to inflammatory processes (M.S. thesis). In April 2004, Mario moved to Providence, R.I. where he performed post doctoral research on the biosynthesis and post translational processing of neuropeptides in the laboratory of Dr. Eduardo Nillni at Rhode Island Hospital/Brown Medical School. In January 2008, he moved to Dallas and joined the Zigman laboratory to perform a second post doctoral fellowship.
Jen-Chieh Chuang, Ph.D. - Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Jay was born in Taichung, which is a city located in the middle part of Taiwan. He attended college in Taipei, where he majored in Zoology. Following a 2-year stint in the Taiwanese armed forces, Jay came to the U.S. to perform graduate work in the laboratory of Dr. Joyce Repa at UTSW. His Ph.D. studies focused on islet physiology, and in particular, the role of nuclear receptors in the endocrine pancreas. Jay successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis in early July 2008. Dr. Chuang moved across the hall from Dr. Repa's lab to the Zigman lab in late July 2008 to begin his postdoctoral work. Jay is married to Tzuling, who is currently completing her graduate studies at UTSW. His hobbies include tropical fish, fishing and badminton.
Sherri Osborne-Lawrence, M.S. - Senior Research Scientist and Lab Manager
Sherri was born in Texas and has lived here all of her life. She received her B.A. degree in Biology from Austin College in Sherman, TX and an M.S. degree in Molecular & Cell Biology from The University of Texas at Dallas. She has worked in 5 laboratories at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Sherri's initial research projects involved positional cloning of genes involved in Rheumatoid Arthritis and Early Onset Familial Breast Cancer. After a few years assisting with the final stages of sequencing for the Human Genome Project, she focused on discovering how endothelial cell dysfunction leads to cardiovascular disease, with particular interests in estrogen modulation as well as the effects of C-reactive protein. In the beginning of July 2006, Sherri joined the Zigman lab as Senior Research Scientist and Lab Manager, and is now expanding her interests to include ghrelin and its effects on metabolic pathways.
Sherry Rovinsky, M.S. - Research Assistant II
Sherry received her B.A. from the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, MN in 1999 and an M.S. from the University of Iowa in 2004. She was the recipient of numerous awards while performing her undergraduate and graduate studies. Prior to joining the Zigman lab, Sherry worked as a research assistant in the laboratory of Mei-Yu Hsu at the University of Iowa, where she excelled in molecular biology and cell culture techniques. Her research focus in the Hsu lab was bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) and their role in malignant melanomas. Her work involved creation of a lentiviral BMP and its antagonists, which she then utilized in both in vivo studies of tumor progression as well as three-dimensional tissue reconstructs. Sherry joined the Zigman lab as a Research Assistant II in January 2007.
