Team Members

Associate Professor 
Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Infectious Diseases 
Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary

Associate Professor Katharina obtained her PhD in Immunology from the Technical University of Munich for her work on regulatory T cells in 2009. She then moved to Stanford, California, for a postdoc in the field of Mucosal Immunology. Since 2014, Dr. Lahl held joint Faculty positions at the Danish Technical University in Denmark and Lund University. She joined the Department for Microbiology, Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Calgary in May 2023. Her team primarily uses Rotavirus infection to study neonatal adaptive immune induction and long-term consequences of neonatal immune induction on overall health with a focus on the role of dendritic cell subsets.

Postdoctoral Fellow 

Simone obtained her PhD in the fields of mesenchymal stromal cells and mucosal immunology in 2021 from the lab of Professor William Agace at the Technical University of Denmark. Afterwards, she moved to University of Copenhagen for a postdoc in nutritional immunology but went on a career break in 2022 to follow her passion for travelling and mountains. Luckily, her recruitment to the University of Calgary in 2023 has allowed her to combine that with a postdoc position in the lab of Dr. Lahl. Here, she investigates the impact of maternal transfer of immunity on neonatal adaptive immune development.

PhD Student

Signe initially joined the Lahl lab in 2021 to complete her master’s degree in biotechnology at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). The project focused on the connection between Bcl6 and the Notch signaling pathway in dendritic cell (DC) development. Following completion of her degree, she accepted a research job at the University of Melbourne, where she worked on Flt3 regulation in DCs. Returning to the Lahl lab in June 2023, first as a research assistant at DTU, and later as a PhD student at the University of Calgary, her work focuses on the roles of Bcl6 and Blimp1 in DC functionality. Outside the lab, Signe enjoys swing dancing, crafting, and hiking in the mountains.

PURE Summer Student

Delaney is a Bachelor of Health Sciences undergraduate student at the University of Calgary. She joined the Lahl lab as a summer student in May 2024. Within her project, she is investigating the impact of Rotavirus on neonatal mucosal immunity within the gut microenvironment. In her free time, Delaney enjoys reading and exploring the outdoors.