People

Huachun Cui is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Dr. Cui earned his PhD from Sun Yat-sen University, China, and then pursued postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Professor Gang Liu at the UAB Department of Medicine. His research focused on delineating how non-coding RNAs participate in cellular inflammation and activation during lung injury and repair. Since completing his postdoctoral training, Dr. Cui has been a primary member of Dr. Gang Liu’s laboratory. His research aims to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms and identify novel therapeutic targets in inflammatory lung diseases, such as acute lung injury and pulmonary fibrosis. Dr. Cui’s current research focuses on investigating: (1) how differential activation of macrophages regulates lung injury and repair, and (2) the metabolic dysregulation in the pathophysiology of lung injury and fibrosis.

Sami Banerjee was born and raised in India. She completed her B.S. in Chemistry and M.S. in Biochemistry at the University of Kolkata, India, and earned her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Bose Institute, India. In 2001, she joined the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) as a postdoctoral fellow. In her first postdoctoral position, she characterized the active form of LQQ-V, a scorpion-derived neurotoxin. In her second postdoctoral position, she was assigned a research project on the “Ubiquitination/proteasome pathway in cell cycle regulation,” where she characterized two novel ubiquitin pathway proteins, UBE2Q2 and G2E3. Subsequently, she joined the division of Pulmonary and Critical Care as a research associate/researcher. She successfully completed several assigned projects, including 1. Proteasome pathway in lung inflammation; 2. Modulation of efferocytosis activity by different proteins in Acute Lung Injury and inflammation; 3. miRNAs in macrophage polarization or differential activation of macrophages. Currently, she is associated with the research project “Influence of metabolic pathways in inflammation and lung fibrosis.” Her responsibilities include generating LoxP-Cre mouse models for proteins of interest, maintaining and treating them as necessary. She is also a key person for overall lab maintenance, lab safety management, and training lab personnel if needed.

Ashish Jaiswal is originally from India, where he completed his Master’s in Life Science at Devi Ahilya University. He then earned his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, where his research focused on “Identifying novel mediators of lung fibrosis.” Currently, he is investigating the “Role of metabolite transporters in lung fibrosis.”

Musaddique Hussain hails from Pakistan. He completed his Pharm. D (Doctor of Pharmacy) and M.Phil. in Pharmacology at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan. During his M.Phil., he focused on the molecular mechanisms of ion channels (Ca2+) and muscarinic receptors, particularly their role in gastrointestinal, respiratory, and vascular disorders. He then pursued his Ph.D. at the School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. His doctoral research centered around evaluating the pharmacological effects of a compound known as the CRTH2 receptor antagonist (CT-133) in the context of acute lung injury.