PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Suraj J. Patel, MD, PhD
Suraj Patel is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center, and a faculty member of the Center for Human Nutrition and the Division of Digestive and Liver Diseases. Originally from the great state of New Jersey, Suraj received his B.S. from Cornell University in aerospace engineering, his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School, and his M.D. from Rutgers University. After completing a residency in Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern and a Fellowship in Gastroenterology & Hepatology at Massachusetts General Hospital, he received post-doctoral training in the lab of Evan D. Rosen, before starting his own lab at UT Southwestern. His research group has an array of interests related to the metabolic causes and consequences of liver disease, and how the immune system influences hepatic metabolism.
Current Lab Members
Samuel Piaker studied biochemistry at Northeastern University, where he received his Bachelor of Science magna cum laude in May 2017. Samuel started working with Dr. Patel in 2019 when he was at Massachusetts General Hospital as a research technician. Now, he has elected to come to Texas to continue their research together at UT Southwestern Medical Center, helping Dr. Patel to run his laboratory as his Lab Manager.
Samuel Piaker
Lab Manager
Neethu Alex
Neethu Alex received her Bachelor of Engineering degree in Biotechnology from RV College of Engineering, Bangalore, and went on to pursue her Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). During her graduate research, she studied the role of pregnancy-regulated steroid hormones on glucose and lipid metabolism in the adipose tissue and skeletal muscle. Neethu joined Dr. Patel’s laboratory at UT Southwestern as a postdoc in September 2022. Her research here is focused on understanding the role of ISGylation and the transcription factor IRF3 in fatty liver disease.
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Ankita earned her PhD from CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata. Her thesis work was focused on impact of gut microbiota derived metabolites in metaflammation and pathophysiology of NASH. She joined Patel lab at UTSW in October 2023. Now, she is working on hepatokine-mediated alcohol metabolism in liver.
Ankita Sarkar
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Ashutosh Shukla
Instructor
Ashutosh Shukla, Ph.D., is an Instructor in the Department of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center and a member of the Division of Digestive and Liver Diseases.
Dr. Shukla holds a master's degree in biochemistry from the University of Hyderabad in India. He earned his doctorate in chromatin and transcription biology at the Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India. He came to UT Southwestern Medical Center in 2018 as a Postdoctoral Researcher and joined the UT Southwestern faculty in 2023.
Sophie Heston
Research Technician
Sophie joined the Patel Lab as a research technician and lab manager. She graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor's of Science in Biochemistry and a Bachelor's of Arts in French Studies. During her undergraduate studies, she was involved in research searching for novel small molecule inhibitors to counter antibiotic resistance-conferring proteins. She is looking forward to continuing her journey of discovery and research in medicine at UTSW.
Marcia McNeely
Administrative Assistant