Austin is a second-year graduate student in the Immunology program. He works in the lab of Dr. Steven Varga, who studies both the innate and adaptive immune responses to respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Knowing since high school that he wanted to study diseases, he attended the University of Texas at Austin and graduated in 2017 with a B.S. in Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. To gain additional research experience after graduating, he joined the lab of Dr. Rachel Bonami in the Rheumatology department at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). While there, he generated various monoclonal antibodies specific to human insulin from hybridoma B cell lines in the hope they could help protect against type 1 diabetes. Currently, his research interests center around RSV in the upper airways and the mechanisms by which it infects that part of the body. When not in the lab, Austin enjoys traveling with his wife, playing video games, and watching both football and baseball.