Jason Carter
Education:
B.A. University of California, San Diego (2014)
M.S. University of California, San Diego (2015)
Current Position:
6th Year MSTP
4th Year Med Student
Advisor:
Mickey Atwal, PhD
Graduate Program:
Applied Mathematics and Statistics
Research Interests:
I am interested in development and application of new computational approaches to address
translational questions in immunology and tumor biology. My undergraduate research focused
on the biophysics of regeneration in planarians and Hydra. My doctoral work in the Atwal Lab at
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory took advantage of recent advances in high-throughput single-cell
sequencing to capture hundreds-of-thousands of paired αβ T cell receptors (TCRs). Employing
tools from machine learning, information theory, and statistical modeling, we explored the
importance of αβ TCR pairing in healthy individuals with respect to (i) accurately inferring TCR
repertoire diversity, (ii) fully understanding repertoire functionality, and (iii) inferring the rate of
allelic inclusion (ααβ/αββ) T cells. Additional work in the lab has focused on topics in
computational cancer genomics, including the prediction of individual response to immune
checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy in metastatic melanoma and the bioinformatic identification
of novel cancer/testis (CT) antigens as potentially targetable neoantigens for immunotherapy.
Honors:
Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society
Publications:
Carter, J.A.*, Freedenberg, A.T.*, Romeiser, J.L., Talbot, L.R., Browne, N.J., Cosgrove, M.E., Shevik, M.E., Generale, L.M., Rago, M.G., Caravella, G.A., Ahmed, T., Mamone, L.J., and Bennett-Guerrero, E. for The Stony Brook Medicine COVID Plasma Trial Group. "Impact of serological and PCR testing requirements on the selection of COVID-19 convalescent plasma donors." Transfusion 61(5):1461-1470 (2021) *Equal Contribution,
Bennett-Guerrero, E., Romeiser, J.L., Talbot, L.R., Tahmeena, A., Mamone, L.J., Singh, S., Hearing, J., Salman, H., Holiprosad, D., Freedenberg, A.T., Carter, J.A., Browne, N.J., Cosgrove, M.E., Shevik, M.E., Generale, L.M., Andrew, M.A., Nachman, S., and Fries, B.C. for the Stony Brook Medicine COVID Plasma Trial Group." Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 convalescent plasma versus standard plasma in coronavirus disease 2019 infected hospitalized patients in New York. A double-blind randomized trial." Critical Care Medicine (2021)
Carter, J.A., Harris, B., and Atwal, G.S. (2020) “A pan-cancer germness score is correlated with
tumor progression and immune response.” In preparation
Carter, J.A., Gilbo, P., and Atwal, G.S. (2019) “IMPRES does not reproducibly predict
response to immune checkpoint blockade therapy in metastatic melanoma.” Nature Medicine
25(12):1833-1835
Carter, J.A., Preall, J., and Atwal, G.S. (2019) “Bayesian inference of allelic inclusion rates in
the human T cell receptor repertoire.” Cell Systems 9(5):475-482
Carter, J.A., Preall, J., Grigaityte, K., Goldfless, S.J., Jeffery, E., Briggs, A.W., Vigneault, F.,
and Atwal, G.S. (2019) “Single T Cell Sequencing Demonstrates the Functional Role of αβ TCR
Pairing in Cell Lineage and Antigen Specificity.” Frontiers in Immunology 10:1516
Grigaityte, K., Carter, J.A., Goldfless, S.J., Jeffery, E.W., Hause, R.J., Jiang, Y., Koppstein, D.,
Briggs, A.W., Church, G.M., Vigneault, F., and Atwal, G.S. (2017) “Single-cell sequencing
reveals αβ pairing shapes the T-cell repertoire.” bioRxiv: 213462
Cochet-Escartin, O.,* Carter, J.A.,* Chakraverti-Wuerthwein, M.,* Sinha, J., and Collins,
E.M.S. (2016) “Slo1 regulates ethanol-induced scrunching in freshwater planarians.” Physical
Biology 13(5): 055001. (*Equal Contribution)
Carter, J.A.,* Hyland, C.,* Steele, R.E., and Collins, E.M.S. (2016) “Dynamics of Mouth
Opening in Hydra. Biophysical Journal 11(5):1191-201. (*Equal Contribution)
Carter, J.A., Lind, C.H., Truong, M.P., and Collins, E.M.S. (2015) “To Each His Own.
Reproductive Strategies and Success of Three Common Planarian Species: Schmidtea
mediterranea, Dugesia japonica, and Dugesia tigrina.” Journal of Statistical Physics
161(1):250-272.
