Meet the members of Team Taghon
Principal Investigator
Prof. Dr. Tom Taghon
Principal Investigator
Prof. dr. Tom Taghon has been leading the Taghon Lab independently since 2012. As principal investigator, his ambitions are to drive the research of human thymocyte development, and to pioneer the study of T lymphocytes in health and disease...Read More
Postdoctoral Researchers
Dr. Kai Ling Liang
Postdoc
Kai is the coordinator for the Novistem project funded by European Innovation Council. Read More
Dr. Nicole Oatman
Postdoc
I obtained my bachelor’s in Molecular & Cellular Biology and my PhD in Cancer and Cell Biology in the United States. As a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Taghon Lab, I aim to unravel the role of GATA3 misexpression in...Read More
Dr. Lena Boehme
Postdoc
My research focusses on the molecular regulation of T cell development in the thymus, for which I use complementary computational and experimental approaches, including single cell multiomics and spatial technologies...Read More
Dr. Jeffrey Aalders
Postdoc
In June 2023, I completed my PhD at Ghent University. During my PhD research I generated several human induced pluripotent stem cell lines which were employed to generate cardiac disease models. In August 2024, I joi...Read More
PhD Students
Cato Deliaert
PhD Student
After completing my Masters of Biomedical Sciences at Ghent University, I joined the Taghon Lab in October 20...
Maryam Hassan
PhD Student
I am a PhD student in the Taghon lab, investigating the different human thymus seeding progenitor subsets and ...
Michaela Cesnekova
PhD Student
I studied Immunology at Charles University in Prague and joined the lab in 2023. In Taghon’s team, I aim to un...
Silke Paepens
PhD Student
I studied Biomedical Sciences at UGent with a masters in immunology. Currently I am a PhD student researching ...
Hui-Kuei Cheng
PhD Student
I am a PhD student investigating the molecular mechanisms behind the dichotomy between human thymus Vd1+ and V...
Emma Boes
PhD Student
In my PhD project, I aim to investigate how oxygen availability in the thymus influences T cell development, w...
Lab Technicians
Imke Velghe
Lab Technician
I studied Cell and Gene Biotechnology at VIVES Hogeschool Roeselare and joined the team in 2013. I support the...
Yana Van Droogenbroeck
Lab Technician
I studied biomedical and pharmaceutical laboratory technologies in Ghent. Before joining the lab in 2022 as a ...
Bio-IT
Tom Putteman
Bioinformatician
Tom supports the team by providing bioinformatics expertise in the analysis of both bulk and single cell seque...



















