As an immunologist, Dr. Jim Castellanos is focused on understanding how the human body maintains skin epithelial barrier immunity. In particular, Dr. Castellanos aims to understand how skin-resident immune cells interact with the skin stem cells to promote epithelial tissue regeneration, microbiome homeostasis and long-lived epigenetic inflammatory memory. In the laboratory, Dr. Castellanos employs a combination of techniques to study skin healing and regeneration, including in vivo genetic mouse models, flow cytometry, immunofluorescent microscopy, single-cell transcriptomics and sequencing technologies. In conjunction, Dr. Castellanos is also establishing a cohort of burn patients to better understand the mechanisms that drive skin healing in human skin burns, with the potential to expediate the development of novel diagnostics, biomarkers and therapeutics. Dr. Castellanos is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Elaine Fuchs’ laboratory at Rockefeller University and a Van Poznak Anesthesiology Research Scholar in the Department of Anesthesiology.