Sam Kazer is a 5th year graduate candidate in the Shalek Lab interested in applying single-cell genomics to tackle problems in infectious disease and allergy. Sam’s research focuses on understanding host-pathogen interactions in HIV infection in humans on a system-wide level; he collaborates widely throughout the Ragon Institute of MGH, Harvard, and MIT and at the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV (K-RITH). 

Sam’s optimistic, but Type-A, attitude was forged through a childhood in the fast-paced cutthroat Long Island, NY suburbs followed by a mellowing high school experience in Denver, CO. Attending Columbia University for his B.A. in Physical Chemistry, Sam worked for three years with Professor Kenneth Eisenthal utilizing non-linear spectroscopy to probe DNA-protein interactions in a label free environment. Following his undergraduate work, he enrolled in the Department of Chemistry at MIT in a Ph.D. program under Alex Shalek. Sam is lapsed photographer, frequent trivia-goer, and all around food lover.