Danillo Augusto

Danillo Augusto is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, leading the Augusto Lab. His research focuses on immunogenetics, genomics, and molecular mechanisms underlying diseases such as pemphigus and infectious diseases. He holds the 2022 Early Career Investigator Award from the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics. His lab investigates the genetic variation of immune system genes, particularly NK cell receptors and HLA, using cutting-edge genomic and transcriptomic approaches. Key research areas include immune system evolution in human populations and the functional impact of genetic variants on disease susceptibility.

Dr. Augusto’s lab has secured significant funding, including a $3.3M NIH grant (R01AI178992) for studying pemphigus immunogenetics and a $594K NIH grant (R21HG012386) for underrepresented population studies. His team includes postdoctoral researchers like Dr. Verónica Calonga-Solís and Dr. Ivan Wolf, along with PhD students Jonathan Beaumont and Javier Avalos Núñez. The lab’s work spans bioinformatics, molecular biology, and population genetics, with recent breakthroughs in understanding asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection mechanisms published in Nature.

Research interests emphasize multi-omics approaches to complex diseases, integrating single-cell transcriptomics, long-read sequencing, and functional validation experiments. The lab’s efforts aim to uncover novel therapeutic targets for autoimmune and infectious diseases by bridging genetic variation with clinical outcomes.