Research

Research Overview

Alex Carll, Ph.D.: Dr. Carll investigates how airborne toxicants and other environmental stressors affect cardiac function to guide government policies and inform the public. Exposure to environmental stressors is tied to arrhythmia, cardiac arrest, and heart failure. His team seeks to validate and better understand these associations. They investigate how environmental stressors impair cardiac conduction and contraction in both rodents and humans, with particular interest in the nervous system’s role. They study the impacts of multiple stressors and toxicants, including e-cigarette aerosols, extreme heat, and air pollutants from many sources (automobiles, urban atmospheres, and consumer products).

Leila Gobejishvili. Ph.D.: Dr. Gobejishvili’s research focus is chronic liver disease, gut-liver and gut-liver-brain access. More specifically, her laboratory investigates the roles of cyclic nucleotide signaling and phosphodiesterases in the pathogenic pathways contributing to various stages of liver disease starting from a simple steatosis (fat accumulation) to steatohepatitis and fibrosis. Her laboratory uses both in vitro cell culture and in vivo animal models to study the mechanisms of liver disease. Her laboratory uses various methods to study the signal transduction in cells and various organs in response to injurious stimuli. These methods include biochemical assays, ELISA, bulk RNA sequencing, real time qPCR, Western blot, protein-protein interaction by immunoprecipitation and chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) to name a few.

Steven Jones, Ph.D.: Dr. Steven Jones leads a cardiovascular research program in the Center for Cardiometabolic Science. His laboratory focuses on heart failure with specific attention to the relationship between ventricular composition and function. At the mechanistic level, his group identifies relationships among inflammation, metabolism, and cardiac physiology. 

Irving Joshua, Ph.D.: Dr. Joshua’s research has involved investigating the mechanisms associated with the control of microvascular function during normal and disease states.  Specifically, he investigates alterations in the vasoconstrictor responses of several vessel levels of the microcirculation during the development of several cardiovascular diseases using established animal models of hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and aging. Much of his research has been related to investigating the role of vascular and endothelial factors in control of micro vessels during normal and disease states using in vivo and in vitro microcirculatory techniques and procedures.

Diego Montoya-Durango, Ph.D.: Dr. Montoya-Durango is passionate about the epigenetics world.  His research is centered on unveiling the effects of alcohol on reactivation of the long noncoding RNA H19 and its association with alcohol-induced liver disease (ALD). The overall goal of his project is to identify candidate targets in the liver that could be used for the development of much-need pharmacological therapies for ALD. Dr. Montoya-Durango's research is guided by Dr. Leila Gobejishvili, professor in the Department of Physiology at the University of Louisville.

Israel Sithu, Ph.D.: The main goal of Dr. Sithu’s research was to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying inflammatory diseases with the aim of impeding disease advancement. Over the past several years, his research scope has expanded to include study of environmental pollutants and their roles in endothelial dysfunction, cardiovascular injury, and atherogenesis. His lab also manages biobanking operations and conducts clinical chemistry analysis for various studies.

Mukesh Sriwastva, Ph.D.: Dr. Sriwastva is in collaboration with Dr. Kavitha Yaddanapudi at the Brown Cancer Center. His primary research explores why certain cancers—such as breast cancer, small-cell lung cancer, and high-grade medulloblastoma, are so difficult to treat. He is passionate about uncovering biological mechanisms that allow these cancers to resist standard therapies, with the ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes. Specifically, he is investigating how certain immune cells, specifically monocytic myeloid-derived suppressor cells (M-MDSCs), help tumors evade detection and destruction by the immune system. 

Daniella Terson de Paleville, Ph.D.: Since 2023, Dr. Terson de Paleville has led the Physiology Active Learning Lab (PAL Lab), where she conducts research on innovative teaching and active learning. Her work focuses on implementing emergent technologies, such as virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence simulation, as well as experiential learning in physiology and biomedical sciences.

Neetu Tyagi, Ph.D.: Dr. Tyagi’s research focuses on uncovering novel mechanisms that regulate brain and bone homeostasis, with implications for understanding and treating neurodegenerative diseases like ischemic stroke and Alzheimer’s, as well as metabolic bone disorders such as osteoporosis. She has successfully obtained research funding as a principal investigator from National Institute of Health and American Heart Association.

Suresh Tyagi, Ph.D.: Dr. Tyagi’s lab focuses on cardiovascular remodeling. Remodeling by its very nature implies synthesis and degradation of extracellular matrix (ECM). His lab is one of the original in Cardiac Remodeling  having discovered MMP/ADAMTS in the heart early in 1992. They are leaders in the field of epigenetic control of cardiovascular development and disease, especially by folate-dependent mechanism. The epigenetic regulation of FOCM in DNA/RNA and histone methylation and acetylation by gene writers and erasers are studied in Dr. Tyagi’s laboratory. His laboratory is one of the few that research the chronic congestive cardiopulmonary heart failure (CHF) by creating aorta-vena cava fistula (AVF) in C57 wild type mice.