Chaz Langelier, MD, PhD | Associate Professor | [email protected]

Chaz is an infectious disease physician scientist in Department of Medicine at University of California San Francisco. He pursued his undergraduate education at Colby College, Waterville, ME and earned his MD, PhD in Medicine/Biochemistry from University of Utah in 2011. Chaz completed his residency in Internal Medicine followed by a Fellowship in Infectious diseases at UCSF in 2014 and 2016 respectively.  He joined the Infectious Diseases Division at UCSF as faculty in 2017, and became a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator in 2021.

Brief bio

I seek to advance the understanding and management of pneumonia, sepsis, and other infectious and inflammatory diseases through clinical investigation leveraging multi-omic technologies. In tandem, I strive to reduce the burden of infectious diseases both in the United States and globally, through clinical practice and public health interventions, and mentor and teach the next generation of physicians and scientists. My research encompasses three central areas: developing novel molecular diagnostics for infectious diseases, studying the host/pathogen biology of pneumonia and sepsis, and advancing methods for the surveillance of emerging infections. Significant contributions include developing novel culture-independent pneumonia and sepsis diagnostics that integrate host gene expression profiling, unbiased pathogen detection and profiling of the microbiome. Our research group has developed and validated these assays in diverse adult and pediatric cohorts, ranging from the critically ill to ambulatory patients, as well as in immunocompromised populations (e.g., PNAS 2018, Nature Microbiology 2022, JCI 2023). More recently, we have leveraged multiomic methods assessing both host and microbe to investigate the host/pathogen biology of pneumonia, including COVID-19, as well as sepsis and ARDS. In this realm, our work has included investigating mechanisms of dysregulated inflammatory signaling in COVID-19 and other lower respiratory tract infections, evaluating the impact of aging on host inflammatory responses in COVID-19, and characterizing molecular subphenotypes of critical illness syndromes (e.g., Nature Communications 2020, 2021, 2022). In addition, I have leveraged my expertise in microbial genomics to advance approaches for pandemic preparedness via the detection and surveillance of emerging pathogens. This includes establishing and leading a genomic epidemiology service for UCSF hospitals, developing new methods from detecting and tracking antimicrobial resistant microbes, and demonstrating culture-independent metagenomics as a tool for surveillance of pneumonia and sepsis pathogens (e.g., Nature Communications 2024, Emerging Infectious Diseases 2019, Clinical Infectious Diseases 2020, Lancet Microbe 2022). Together, by combining research, clinical practice, and mentoring, I aim to advance the management and understanding of pneumonia, sepsis and other critical infectious disease syndromes while uplifting the next generation of biomedical investigators.

Victoria Chu, MD, MPH | Assistant Professor | [email protected]

Victoria is a pediatric infectious disease fellow who is using metagenomics for antimicrobial resistance surveillance. She is interested in understanding acquisition and transmission dynamics, metagenomics and whole genome sequencing for hospital transmission and outbreak events. Besides working in the lab and hospital, she likes escape room games and board games.

Emily Lydon, MD | Clinical Fellow | [email protected]

Emily is a second year infectious diseases fellow at UCSF. She is originally from Massachusetts, completed her MD at Duke, and internal medicine residency at UCSF. Her clinical interest is in transplant, and she is  participating in the transplant/immunocompromised host track for her clinical training. Her main research project in the Langelier Lab leverages mNGS to develop host/microbial signatures that distinguish between states of infection and health in a cohort of lung transplant patients. Outside of work, Emily enjoys cycling, skiing, playing pickleball, and camping.”

Padmini Deosthale-Bapat, MS | Research Associate | [email protected]

Padmini is a Master’s in biotechnology and zoology. Her main interset is on using metagenomic sequencing  to understand host immune response to infections. Her long term goal is to use multi-omics approaches integrated with computational tools to understand disease heterogeneity & phenotypic diversity in infectious diseases. Besides lab work, she enjoys listening to music, painting and exploring Bay area coffee shops.

Rithwik Narenda | Undergrad Researcher | [email protected]

Rithwik is an undergraduate research scholar who is pursuing studies in computational biology at UCLA. He is actively investigating the impact of aging on host inflammatory signaling in autoimmune and infectious diseases.