Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology; Chair, Dept Basic Science: Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry
PhD Faculty
Organizations on this page
PhD Faculty - Bacteriology
- Dr. Breaker is a Sterling Professor of the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University, is jointly appointed as a professor in the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, and is an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His graduate studies with Dr. Peter Gilham at Purdue University focused on the synthesis of RNA and the catalytic properties of nucleic acids. As a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Gerald Joyce at The Scripps Research Institute, Dr. Breaker pioneered a variety of in vitro evolution strategies to isolate novel RNA enzymes and was the first to discover catalytic DNAs or “deoxyribozymes” using this technology. Since establishing his laboratory at Yale in 1995, Dr. Breaker has continued to conduct research on the advanced functions of nucleic acids, including ribozyme reaction
... Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Medicine (Rheumatology) and Professor of Pathology and of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Chief, Rheumatology, Allergy, & Immunology; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health; Rheumatologist in Chief, Rheumatology, YNHH
Richard Bucala, MD, PhD, is Chief, Section of Rheumatology, Allergy & Immunology and the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Endowed Professor of Medicine, Pathology, and Epidemiology & Public Health. He studies the regulation of the immune system with a focus on how protective responses can lead to immunopathology and disease. His laboratory’s main emphasis is MIF-family cytokines, their role in genetic susceptibility to disease, and their therapeutic targeting for different clinical conditions. The Bucala group is credited with the molecular cloning of MIF and discovery of its critical role in regulating glucocorticoid immunosuppression, which opened novel approaches to therapy in autoimmune inflammatory conditions. His lab also identified the MIF receptor and discovered common polymorphisms in the MIF gene, which show global population stratification.... Professor; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Dr. Vanessa Ezenwa is a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University. She received a BA in Biology from Rice University, and PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University. She completed postdocs at Princeton and the U.S. Geological Survey. Before joining the Yale faculty in 2021, she was a Professor of Ecology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Georgia. Dr. Ezenwa’s research focuses on the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases in wild animal populations, and she studies how within-host interactions between hosts and pathogens translate to larger-scale epidemiological patterns. She has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a Zoetis Award for Veterinary Research Excellence, and a Fulbright Scholar Award. She is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.... Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases) and of Microbial Pathogenesis; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health; Section Chief, Infectious Diseases, Internal Medicine
My laboratory investigates vector-borne diseases. Studies are directed toward understanding Lyme disease, flaviviral infections including dengue and West Nile viruses, and malaria. Efforts on Lyme disease include exploring immunity to Borrelia burgdorferi, selective B. burgdorferi gene expression in vivo, and the immunobiology of Lyme arthritis. Flaviviruses and Plasmodium are used as models to understand the molecular interactions between pathogens, their arthropod vectors and their mammalian hosts. Finally, we are developing new approaches to prevent ticks and mosquitoes from feeding on a vertebrate host, thereby interfering with pathogen transmission.Lucille P. Markey Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and Professor of Cell Biology
Dr. Jorge E. Galán earned his DVM from the National University of La Plata (Argentina) and his Ph.D. in Microbiology from Cornell University. He completed postdoctoral studies at Washington University in St. Louis, and was in the Faculty at SUNY Stony Brook before coming to Yale in 1998. He is currently the Lucille B. Markey Professor of Microbiology and Professor of Cell Biology at the Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Galán is the recipient of numerous honors and awards including the Pew Scholar in Biomedical Sciences, the Searle Scholar Award, the National Institutes of Health MERIT award in 2000 and 2015, the Hans Sigrist Prize, the Alexander M. Cruickshank Award, and the Robert Koch Prize. He is a member of the American Academy of Microbiology, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement... C.N.H. Long Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and Director of Microbial Sciences Institute; Chair, Microbial Pathogenesis
Andrew L. Goodman, PhD, is the C. N. H. Long Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis and Director of the Yale Microbial Sciences Institute. Goodman received his undergraduate degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University, his PhD in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Harvard University, and completed postdoctoral training at Washington University. His lab uses microbial genetics, gnotobiotics, and mass spectrometry to understand how gut microbes interact with their host during health and disease. The lab is also interested in how the microbiome impacts the efficacy and toxicity of medical drugs. The lab’s contributions have been recognized by the NIH Director New Innovator Award, the Pew Foundation, the Dupont Young Professors Award, the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation, the Howard... Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis
I am a geneticist who studies the mechanisms that enable bacteria to both cause disease and further human health. I received an M.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Buenos Aires and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. After spending 20 years in the faculty of the Washington University School of Medicine, I joined the Yale School of Medicine in 2010. For 19 years, I was a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.Associate Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and of Chemistry
- Margaret Hostetter
Former YSM faculty
Department: PediatricsYears active at Yale: 1998-2010Dr. Hostetter is recognized for going where few women had gone before: leadership posts in pediatrics departments at leading universities. She joined the Yale faculty as a professor of pediatrics and director of the Yale Child Health Research Center. In 2002 she was named the Jean McLean Wallace Professor and chair of the department of pediatrics. At the time, there were no other women chairs at the Yale School of Medicine—and very few across the country. Between 2000 and 2010, Dr. Hostetter was also professor of microbial pathogenesis. She is one of only three women to be elected president of the Society for Pediatric Research and the American Pediatric Society over the past 125 years. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI), and... Gustavus and Louise Pfeiffer Research Foundation M.D.-Ph.D. Program Director and Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and of Microbial Pathogenesis; Professor, Microbial Pathogenesis; Director, MD-PhD Program, Yale University
Dr. Kazmierczak received her PhD from Rockefeller University (1993) and her MD from Cornell University Medical College (1994), both in New York City. She completed an Internal Medicine residency and Infectious Diseases fellowship training at the University of California, San Francisco, and joined the Yale faculty in 2001. She is currently a Professor of Medicine and Microbial Pathogenesis, and Director of the MD-PhD program at Yale. Dr. Kazmierczak's research program is broadly focused on bacterial and host factors that allow opportunistic infections to occur. Using Pseudomonas aeruginosa as a clinically relevant model, her lab addresses fundamental questions of how cell-envelope spanning bacterial machines - the Type 3 secretion system, Type 4 pili and polar flagellum - are assembled, regulated, and used during infection. She has also... Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis
Dr. Liu has been working in the field of electron microscopy for 20 years. In particular, he gained expertise in cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) after working with Prof. Ken Taylor at Florida State University and Dr. Sriram Subramaniam at NIH. Since he started his own laboratory in 2007, he has been dedicated to developing high-throughput cryo-ET pipeline in which both data collection and image analysis are streamlined and automated. The high-throughput cryo-ET pipeline is becoming increasingly powerful, enabling his laboratory to visualize over 100,000 cells from 100 different bacterial species. More importantly, the massive data from cryo-ET has been systematically utilized to gain structural insights into fundamental biological processes related to signaling transduction, flagellar assembly, protein secretion, phage adsorption DNA translocation,... Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and of Immunobiology; Member, Yale Systems Biology Institute; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
John MacMicking is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator, Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and Professor of Immunobiology. He trained in synthetic organic chemistry at the Australian National University (B.Sc, 1st Class Honors) where he conducted thesis work in the Department of Immunology & Cell Biology formerly headed by 1996 Nobel Laureate, Peter Doherty, at the John Curtin School of Medical Research. He then came to the U.S. to pursue Ph.D studies with Carl Nathan in the Immunology program at Cornell University-Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City before being selected as an HHMI Life Science Research Foundation Fellow at The Rockefeller University to conduct studies with John McKinney. His doctoral dissertation described the first knockout of an interferon (IFN)-induced defense protein in eukaryotes - inducible nitric... Sterling Professor of Immunobiology; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Medzhitov laboratory studies biology of inflammation, mechanisms of homoeostasis, allergic immunity and mechanisms of diseases.Assistant Professor of Pharmacology
Wei Mi obtained his PhD degree in structural biology at Peking University, Beijing, China. Fascinated by structures of membrane proteins, he came to the US and received postdoctoral training at Purdue University, the University of Washington and Harvard Medical School (HMS). At HMS, he joined the laboratory of Dr. Maofu Liao and used single particle cryo-electron microscopy (Cryo-EM) to determine structures of ATP-binding cassette transporters in lipid bilayer environment. In 2019, Dr Mi joined the Department of Pharmacology at Yale University School of Medicine. The focus of his research is to dissect mechanisms of membrane proteins involved in lipopolysaccharide (LPS) synthesis and regulation with genetic, biochemical, and structural approaches.Assistant Professor
Hualiang Pi, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis and member of the Microbial Sciences Institute. Hualiang received her PhD in Microbiology from Cornell University and conducted her postdoctoral training at Vanderbilit University Medical Center. The Pi lab focuses on elucidating microbial stress defense mechanisms important for bacterial infection. She is also the recipient of an NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00).Associate Professor Term
Hesper trained as physicist in both her undergraduate studies (Caltech, B.S. Physics, 2005), and her graduate studies (UCSF, PhD, Biophysics, 2011). She did her graduate work with the late Mats Gustafsson at UCSF and Janelia Farm. In his group, she developed a nonlinear form of Structured-Illumination Microscopy. Afterwards, wanting to explore a biological phenomenon she did her postdoctoral work with Eric Rubin at the Harvard School of Public Health where she became fascinated by the ability of genetically identical organisms to display different phenotypes. This phenomenon is especially important for the treatment of tuberculosis, a disease caused by the bacterial pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis. She is excited to start a research group at the intersection of these two areas: the application of advanced light microscopy techniques to... Dorys McConnell Duberg Professor of Immunobiology and Professor of Pharmacology; Co-Leader, Cancer Immunology, Yale Cancer Center
Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and of Immunobiology and Director of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS); Vice-Chair, Department of Microbial Pathogenesis; Co-Director of Graduate Admissions (DGA), Microbiology PhD Program of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Craig Roy received his B.S. from Michigan State University in 1985 and earned his Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University in 1991 in the laboratory of Dr. Stanley Falkow. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Ralph Isberg in the Department of Molecular Microbiology at Tufts University School of Medicine in 1996, he was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Stony Brook University. Dr. Roy became a founding member of the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis at Yale University in 1998 and serves as Vice-Chair. He currently holds the title of Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and Immunobiology. Research in the Roy laboratory focuses on the host-pathogen interface. Using multi-disciplinary approaches his laboratory has discovered many... Sterling Professor Emeritus of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry
A native of Germany, Prof. Dieter Söll earned undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees from Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, Germany. He did postdoctoral work at the University of Wisconsin's Institute for Enzyme Research and served as an assistant professor there 1965-1967. He joined the Yale faculty as an associate professor in MB&B in 1967, was promoted to a full professorship in the department in 1976 and became a professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, and the Department of Chemistry in 1985 and 1995, respectively. He was chair of MB&B 1982-1984.Söll's honors include a 1988 Humboldt Preis (Senior Distinguished Scientist Award). He was named a Humboldt Fellow in 2000. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology, and is a... Assistant Professor, Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
Jing Yan is currently an Assistant Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and a member of the Quantitative Biology Institute (Qbio) at Yale. Originally from Shanghai, China, he obtained his B.S. degree from the College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at Peking University in China, with extensive undergraduate research experience in organic synthesis. In 2009, he switched to the field of soft matter physics and pursued Ph.D. degree in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2014, he stumbled into microbiology at Princeton as a joint postdoctoral researcher in the department of Molecular Biology and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. in 2019, he started his independent lab at Yale. His lab focuses on bacterial biofilms, surface-attached communities of bacteria...
PhD Faculty - Virology
Assistant Professor
Grace Chen received her undergraduate training in the College of Chemistry at UC Berkeley. She attended Harvard University for her PhD where she worked in David Liu's laboratory to discover and characterize novel RNA modifications. Her postdoctoral research was at Stanford University in Howard Chang's group, where she investigated circular RNA immunity. Grace joined Yale University as a faculty in the Department of Immunobiology in 2019. Her research focuses on the functions and regulations of circular RNAs and RNA modifications in health and disease.Henry Bronson Professor of Pharmacology; Chairman, Consortium for the Globalization of Chinese Medicine (CGCM)
The Cheng laboratory studies the action of antiviral drugs against HBV, HIV, EBV, and HCV, as well as the discovery of antivirals with unique mode of action against those viruses.Eugene Higgins Professor of Immunobiology and Professor of Cell Biology
Dr. Cresswell is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Immunobiology and Professor of Cell Biology and Dermatology at Yale University School of Medicine. He received his B.S. degree in chemistry, his M.S. degree in microbiology from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, U.K., and his Ph.D. degree in biochemistry and immunology from London University. His postdoctoral training was completed at Harvard University with Jack Strominger.Before assuming his position at Yale, Dr. Cresswell was Chief of the Division of Immunology at Duke University Medical Center. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, U.K., and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine.Assistant Professor
Allison Didychuk was born in northern Manitoba (Canada). Allison made her way south to the University of Jamestown in North Dakota, where she majored in Biology, Chemistry, and Mathematics (B.S. 2012). She then did her Ph.D. in Biophysics with Dr. Samuel Butcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying the assembly of the yeast spliceosome (Ph.D. 2017). She moved to the University of California, Berkeley for postdoctoral training with Dr. Britt Glaunsinger, where she studied essential steps of herpesvirus replication. She joined the Yale faculty in 2022 as an Assistant Professor in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, where she continues to use diverse approaches - structural biology, molecular virology, single-molecule biophysics, and functional genomics - to understand how herpes viruses work. Click here to visit the Didychuk lab... Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Genetics and Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and of Therapeutic Radiology; Deputy Director, Yale Cancer Center
The DiMaio laboratory is studying the molecular mechanisms of how human papillomaviruses enter cells, with a particular focus on identifying the cellular proteins that mediate virus entry and intracellular trafficking and determining their molecular mechanisms of action. In addition, it is using viral transmembrane proteins as a basis to develop a class of artificial small transmembrane proteins with a variety of biological activities, including the ability to form tumors and confer resistance to virus infection. Some of these proteins are the simplest proteins ever described and their study will reveal new features of protein action and the basis for specificity in protein-protein interactions.Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases) and of Microbial Pathogenesis; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health; Section Chief, Infectious Diseases, Internal Medicine
My laboratory investigates vector-borne diseases. Studies are directed toward understanding Lyme disease, flaviviral infections including dengue and West Nile viruses, and malaria. Efforts on Lyme disease include exploring immunity to Borrelia burgdorferi, selective B. burgdorferi gene expression in vivo, and the immunobiology of Lyme arthritis. Flaviviruses and Plasmodium are used as models to understand the molecular interactions between pathogens, their arthropod vectors and their mammalian hosts. Finally, we are developing new approaches to prevent ticks and mosquitoes from feeding on a vertebrate host, thereby interfering with pathogen transmission.Sterling Professor of Immunobiology; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Dr. Flavell is Sterling Professor of Immunobiology at Yale University School of Medicine, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received his B.Sc. (Honors) in 1967 and Ph.D. in 1970 in biochemistry from the University of Hull, England, and performed postdoctoral work in Amsterdam (1970-72) with Piet Borst and in Zurich (1972-73) with Charles Weissmann. Before accepting his current position in 1988, Dr. Flavell was first Assistant Professor (equivalent) at the University of Amsterdam (1974-79); then Head of the Laboratory of Gene Structure and Expression at the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London (1979-82); and subsequently President and Chief Scientific Officer of Biogen Research Corporation, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1982-88). Dr. Flavell is a fellow of the Royal Society, a member of the National Academy of Sciences as... Associate Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Immunobiology
Dr. Ellen Foxman, M.D., PhD. is an Associate Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine. Her laboratory studies antiviral defense in the human respiratory tract, focusing on innate immunity, an inborn system of protective mechanisms that guards against harmful viruses or bacteria, even when the body has never encountered the infection before. The overarching goal of this research is to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of illnesses caused by respiratory viruses.Background. Dr. Foxman trained in medicine and immunology at Stanford University. She became interested in respiratory viruses during her residency training in clinical pathology at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital, due to the advances in testing that were beginning to reveal a previously unappreciated very high prevalence of... Assistant Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases)
Dr. Benjamin Goldman-Israelow is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine in the section of Infectious Diseases. He obtained his AB in Biology from Washington University in St. Louis and his MD and PhD degrees from The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He joined Yale internal medicine in the ABIM Short Track Pathway, completing residency and Infectious Diseases fellowship training. During fellowship, Dr. Goldman-Israelow joined the laboratory of Dr. Akiko Iwasaki for his postdoctoral studies. There, he has studied SARS-CoV-2 infection, pathogenesis, and immunity in both patients and pre-clinical models. His work has led to the development of one of the first mouse models to study SARS-CoV-2, the identification of immunologic factors contributing to COVID-19 pathogenesis and protection, and the development of a novel mucosal vaccine... Associate Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Nathan Grubaugh joined the faculty at Yale School of Public Health in 2018. Before going to graduate school, he spent ~7 years working in the biotech industry developing early phase vaccine candidates. He earned his MS in biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University (2011) while conducting research at the NIH and the US Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (focus on mosquito-borne virus surveillance). Dr. Grubaugh earned his PhD in microbiology from Colorado State University in 2016 (focus on West Nile virus evolution), and went on to be a postdoctoral fellow at The Scripps Research Institute to study the 2015-2017 Zika virus epidemic. Now at Yale, the Grubaugh Lab uses genomics and phylogenetics to uncover the epidemiological, ecological, and evolutionary determinants of virus outbreaks. They primarily focus on mosquito... Associate Professor Term; Director of Graduate Studies, Microbiology PhD Program of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Dr. Ho's research program focuses on understanding HIV-1 persistence and HIV-1-induced immune dysfunction using single-genome and single-cell approaches on clinical samples. She received MD in 2002 (Phi Tau Phi) and completed internal medicine residency and infectious disease fellowship training in Taiwan in 2007. She practiced as an infectious disease attending physician for one year (2007-2008). She received PhD at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Phi Beta Kappa, HHMI International Student Research Fellowship, and Johns Hopkins Young Investigator Award) in 2013, mentored by Dr. Robert F. Siliciano. During PhD, she developed the first HIV-1 full-length single-genome sequencing method that became the standard measurement of the size of the HIV-1 latent reservoir (Cell 2013). As a postdoc, she profiled HIV-1 DNA and RNA landscape and... Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and Professor of Dermatology and of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, (HHMI)
Akiko Iwasaki, Ph.D., is a Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale University, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in Canada and her postdoctoral training from the National Institutes of Health. Her research focuses on the mechanisms of immune defense against viruses at the mucosal surfaces, and the development of mucosal vaccine strategies. She is the co-Lead Investigator of the Yale COVID-19 Recovery Study, which aims to determine the changes in the immune response of people with long COVID after vaccination. Dr. Iwasaki also leads multiple other studies to interrogate the pathobiology of long COVID, both in patients, and through developing animal models of long COVID. Dr. Iwasaki was elected to the National... Raj and Indra Nooyi Professor of Public Health and Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases) and of Medicine (Infectious Diseases); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Dr. Albert Icksang Ko is the Raj and Indra Nooyi Professor of Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health and a Collaborating Researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Brazilian Ministry of Health. His research centers on the health problems that have emerged as a consequence of rapid urbanization and social inequity. Dr. Ko coordinates a research program in Brazil, which focuses on delineating the role of social marginalization, urban ecology and climate in the emergence of infectious disease threats in slum communities and informal settlements. He and his team have mobilized research capacity to develop and implement community-based interventions to epidemics of meningitis, leptospirosis, dengue, Zika virus infection and associated birth defects, and the current COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Ko is also Program Director of the Fogarty/NIH Global Health... Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases and of Microbial Pathogenesis; Director of Graduate Admissions, The BBS Microbiology Track; Director, Yale Predoctoral Training Program in Virology, Virology Laboratories; Chartered Member, Study Section: NIH: NIAID- AIDS Discovery And Development Of Therapeutics, National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health
Dr. Priti Kumar received her PhD in Immunology from Indian Institute of Science in the year 2002. After completing her postdoctoral studies from Harvard Medical School, she joined as an Assistant Professor at Yale University in the year 2008. Currently, she is Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases at Yale University School of Medicine. Her laboratory conducts translational research with a focus on treatment of diseases caused by RNA viruses. For the last 12 years as faculty at Yale, she made key contributions towards the development and testing of gene therapy and cure based approaches that overcome in vivo biological barriers to enable the use of next-generation biologicals like nucleic acids such as siRNA, nucleases such as recombinases and CRISPRs and antibodies with effector function for their therapeutic potential against viruses like HIV-1, West Nile virus,... Assistant Professor
Dr. Maudry Laurent-Rolle received her B.S. from Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus in Biology in 2001. She then obtained her MD and PhD from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her dissertation research was funded by an NIH pre-doctoral fellowship, which allowed her to examine the molecular mechanisms by which flaviviruses inhibit host innate immune responses. She completed residency training in Internal Medicine at Albert Einstein/Montefiore Medical Center in 2016 then joined the Infectious Diseases Fellowship program here at Yale University. Her research focus is on vaccine design and development of antivirals. She is originally from the beautiful Caribbean island of Dominica, known for its many rivers, tropical rainforests, and natural hot springs.Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis
Dr. Liu has been working in the field of electron microscopy for 20 years. In particular, he gained expertise in cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) after working with Prof. Ken Taylor at Florida State University and Dr. Sriram Subramaniam at NIH. Since he started his own laboratory in 2007, he has been dedicated to developing high-throughput cryo-ET pipeline in which both data collection and image analysis are streamlined and automated. The high-throughput cryo-ET pipeline is becoming increasingly powerful, enabling his laboratory to visualize over 100,000 cells from 100 different bacterial species. More importantly, the massive data from cryo-ET has been systematically utilized to gain structural insights into fundamental biological processes related to signaling transduction, flagellar assembly, protein secretion, phage adsorption DNA translocation,... Assistant Professor; Assistant Professor, Immunobiology; Affiliated Faculty, Center for Infection and Immunity; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Carolina Lucas PhD is an Assistant Professor of Immunobiology and a member of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Yale University. She received her Ph.D. from UFRJ/ETH in Brazil and Switzerland and completed her postdoctoral training at Yale in Dr. Akiko Iwasaki Lab studying emerging virus pathogenesis, including Zika virus, CHIKV and SARS-CoV-2. The Lucas Lab is dedicated to understanding basic immune mechanisms necessary for controlling emerging viral infections and to lay the groundwork for new therapeutic approaches and vaccination strategies. Specifically, the lab explores immune responses following vaccination or infection that contribute to both resistance and disease tolerance mechanisms across different age groups.Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and of Immunobiology; Member, Yale Systems Biology Institute; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
John MacMicking is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator, Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and Professor of Immunobiology. He trained in synthetic organic chemistry at the Australian National University (B.Sc, 1st Class Honors) where he conducted thesis work in the Department of Immunology & Cell Biology formerly headed by 1996 Nobel Laureate, Peter Doherty, at the John Curtin School of Medical Research. He then came to the U.S. to pursue Ph.D studies with Carl Nathan in the Immunology program at Cornell University-Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City before being selected as an HHMI Life Science Research Foundation Fellow at The Rockefeller University to conduct studies with John McKinney. His doctoral dissertation described the first knockout of an interferon (IFN)-induced defense protein in eukaryotes - inducible nitric... John F. Enders Professor of Pediatrics (Infectious Disease) and Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases) and of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry
Dr. Miller’s laboratory studies the mechanisms underlying the switch between latency and lytic replication of two oncogenic herpesviruses, Epstein-Barr virus and Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus. Current experiments explore how viral and cellular transcription factors that selectively bind to methylated DNA control expression of viral and cellular genes, how cellular gene expression is selectively inhibited while viral gene expression is enhanced, and how viral DNA replication is regulated by cellular proteins. Recent studies focus on a new class of anti-viral agents that inhibit reactivation of Epstein-Barr virus from latency into lytic infection.Professor
Dr. Miller-Jensen is working on systems-scale approaches to study immune cell heterogeneity with a focus macrophage innate immune cells. Macrophages are critical for healthy tissue function and are also an important emerging target for cancer immunotherapy. Other areas of interest include the role of cell-to-cell heterogeneity in latent HIV infection in T cells.Paul B. Beeson Professor of Medicine and Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis; Co-Director of Graduate Admissions (DGA), Microbiology PhD Program of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Dr. Mothes studied chemistry (Diploma 1993) and received a Ph.D. in cell biology (Humboldt-University Berlin, 1998) for his studies on protein secretion and membrane protein integration at the endoplasmic reticulum under the mentorship of Dr. Tom Rapoport at Harvard Medical School. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. John Young and James Cunningham on retroviral entry before he started his own laboratory at Yale University in 2001. Dr. Mothes received Tenure in 2011, was promoted to Full Professor in 2016, and became the Paul B. Beeson Professor of Medicine in 2021.Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Professor of Cell Biology
Christian Schlieker is an expert in dissecting cellular etiology of movement disorders, with a focus on nuclear compartmentalization and liquid-liquid phase separation. After undergraduate studies at the University of Bonn/Germany and the University of New South Wales in Sydney/Australia, Dr. Schlieker performed his PhD in Bernd Bukau’s laboratory at the Center for Molecular Biology in Heidelberg, Germany. Here, he employed biochemical and biophysical tools to define the mechanism of Clp/HSP100 AAA+ ATPases in counteracting proteotoxic protein accumulation. He then joined the laboratory of Hidde Ploegh at Harvard Medical School and the Whitehead Institute/MIT, where he worked on the ubiquitin/proteasome system and identified a novel role for a Ubiquitin-related modifier in RNA modification. Dr. Schlieker joined the Department... Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and of Microbial Pathogenesis; Chief, Infectious Diseases Research at VACT
After finishing his undergraduate studies at Brown University, Dr. Sutton enrolled in the MSTP at Stanford, where he obtained his PhD degree with Dr. John Boothroyd, working on trans-splicing in African trypanosomes. He then completed a categorical residency in internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and a fellowship in infectious diseases at UCSF. After post-doctoral stints with Drs. Harold Varmus, Dan Littman, and Pat Brown in which he worked on HTLV cell binding and entry and the development of HIV-based gene therapy vectors, he joined the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine. In 2008 he was recruited to Yale to continue his work on HIV replication and lentiviral vectors. Dr. Sutton spends approximately 50% of his time at the research bench and 25% in the clinical setting, both out-patient and in-patient, mainly at the West... Elihu Professor of Biostatistics and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Co-Leader, Genomics, Genetics, & Epigenetics Research Program
Professor Townsend received his Ph.D. in 2002 in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard University, under the advisement of Daniel Hartl. His Ph.D. was entitled "Population genetic variation in genome-wide gene expression: modeling, measurement, and analysis", and constituted the first population genetic analysis of genome-wide gene expression variation. After making use of the model budding yeast S. cerevisiae for his Ph.D. research, Dr. Townsend accepted an appointment as a Miller Fellow at the University of California-Berkeley in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, where he worked to develop molecular tools, techniques, and analysis methodologies for functional genomics studies with the filamentous fungal model species Neurospora crassa, co-advised by Berkeley fungal evolutionary biologist John Taylor and molecular mycologist... Assistant Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Affiliate Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health. I have a background in ecology, medical entomology, virology, and genomics. During my PhD at Wageningen University & Research, I studied the role of Culex pipiens mosquitoes in transmission of West Nile virus in Europe. My interdisciplinary project involved local mosquito surveillance in the field, vector competence studies in the laboratory, and modeling. These studies led to important insights in the role of climate as a limiting factor to transmission of West Nile virus in Europe. During my postdoc at the Yale School of Public Health, I shifted my focus to using genomics to understand the role of virus evolution in the unexpected scale and severity of the Zika virus epidemic in the Americas. Using a reverse genetics platform, we... Associate Professor Term; Medical Director, Immune Monitoring Core Facility
Dr. Wilen is an Associate Professor in Laboratory Medicine and Immunobiology and is focused on the host-pathogen interactions of RNA viruses including coronavirus and norovirus. Dr. Wilen received his A.B in Biology and Economics at Washington University in St. Louis, his MD and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. His residency training was in clinical pathology at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, MO. His postdoctoral studies were conducted in the laboratory of Herbert "Skip" Virgin at Washington University School of Medicine where he studied the pathogenesis of norovirus, the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis. Dr. Wilen discovered CD300lf as the first receptor for a norovirus and identified intestinal tuft cells as the physiologic target cell for mouse norovirus infection. Current work in the Wilen lab is focused on identifying mechanisms of immunity... Professor
Dr. Xiong’s research focuses on structural and biochemical studies of virus suppression by host antiviral factors and viral immune evasion. Dr. Xiong also investigates cellular DNA repair pathways.
PhD Faculty - Parasitology
Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Professor Aksoy is a tropical medicine researcher whose work focuses on the epidemiology of insect transmitted (vector borne) and zoonotic diseases. Her research has been on tsetse flies and the pathogenic parasites they transmit that cause highly neglected and fatal diseases of humans in Africa, known as Sleeping Sickness. Her laboratory focuses on deciphering the vector-parasite molecular dialogue and parasite development during the transmission process with the ultimate goal of identifying novel targets of interference and developing transmission blocking vaccines to reduce disease. Her fundamental and interdisciplinary work on tsetse and its microbial symbionts has identified key principles that shape host-microbe interactions. Her studies with tsetse's mutualistic microbes identified nutritional contributions that facilitate female... Associate Professor of Epidemiology (Mircrobial Diseases); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Dr. Bei’s research interests in Plasmodium – the causative agent of malaria - lie at the intersection between population genetics, genomics, molecular genetics, epidemiology, and immunology. Her current research uses a translational systems biology approach to study the impact of antigenic diversity on immune evasion, transmission, and virulence in setting of declining malaria transmission. She is studying the development of genotype-specific and genotype-transcendent immunity and assess the effect of specific persisting genotypes on neutralizing humoral immune responses and their transmission potential in the mosquito vector. She also works on malaria vaccine candidate discovery and validation, studying the functional consequences of naturally arising diversity. Dr. Bei has ongoing research projects in Senegal in addition to many active... John F. Enders Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Medicine (Rheumatology) and Professor of Pathology and of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Chief, Rheumatology, Allergy, & Immunology; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health; Rheumatologist in Chief, Rheumatology, YNHH
Richard Bucala, MD, PhD, is Chief, Section of Rheumatology, Allergy & Immunology and the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Endowed Professor of Medicine, Pathology, and Epidemiology & Public Health. He studies the regulation of the immune system with a focus on how protective responses can lead to immunopathology and disease. His laboratory’s main emphasis is MIF-family cytokines, their role in genetic susceptibility to disease, and their therapeutic targeting for different clinical conditions. The Bucala group is credited with the molecular cloning of MIF and discovery of its critical role in regulating glucocorticoid immunosuppression, which opened novel approaches to therapy in autoimmune inflammatory conditions. His lab also identified the MIF receptor and discovered common polymorphisms in the MIF gene, which show global population stratification.... Department Chair and Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Professor of Pediatrics (Infectious Disease) and Microbial Pathogenesis; Interim Director, Yale Institute for Global Health; Associate Director, MD-PhD Program
Michael Cappello MD is Professor and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health, and Professor of Pediatrics and Microbial Pathogenesis at Yale Medical School. He graduated from Brown University with a degree in Biomedical Ethics and received his MD from Georgetown University in Washington, DC. After training in adult and Pediatric infectious diseases at Yale, Dr. Cappello joined the faculty in 1995, where he oversees a laboratory and field based research program focused on global health, tropical medicine and molecular parasitology. He is a 2007 recipient of the Bailey K. Ashford medal, awarded by the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene “for distinguished work in tropical medicine.” In addition to research, Dr. Cappello provides clinical care as an Infectious Diseases specialist at Yale... Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases) and of Microbial Pathogenesis; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health; Section Chief, Infectious Diseases, Internal Medicine
My laboratory investigates vector-borne diseases. Studies are directed toward understanding Lyme disease, flaviviral infections including dengue and West Nile viruses, and malaria. Efforts on Lyme disease include exploring immunity to Borrelia burgdorferi, selective B. burgdorferi gene expression in vivo, and the immunobiology of Lyme arthritis. Flaviviruses and Plasmodium are used as models to understand the molecular interactions between pathogens, their arthropod vectors and their mammalian hosts. Finally, we are developing new approaches to prevent ticks and mosquitoes from feeding on a vertebrate host, thereby interfering with pathogen transmission.Rachel Carson Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Dr. Paul Turner is the Rachel Carson Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, and Microbiology faculty member at Yale School of Medicine. He obtained a BA in Biology (1988) from University of Rochester, a PhD in Microbial Evolution (1995) from Michigan State University, and did postdocs at National Institutes of Health, University of Valencia in Spain, and University of Maryland-College Park, before joining Yale in 2001. Dr. Turner studies evolutionary genetics of viruses, particularly phages that infect bacterial pathogens and RNA viruses transmitted by arthropods, and researches the use of phages to treat antibiotic-resistant bacterial diseases. He is very active in science-communication outreach to the general public, and is involved in programs where faculty collaborate with K-12 teachers to improve STEMM education in underserved... Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases), Anthropology, and Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Dr. Vinetz is Professor of Medicine in the Section of Infectious Diseases. He is also Research Professor in the Faculty of Sciences and Laboratory of Research and Development at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, and Associated Investigator of the Alexander von Humboldt Institute of Tropical Medicine at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, in Lima, Peru. He received his Bachelor of Science from Yale University and received his M.D. from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, during which time he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Physician Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institutes of Health. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American...
PhD Faculty - Microbiome
Professor; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Dr. Vanessa Ezenwa is a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University. She received a BA in Biology from Rice University, and PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University. She completed postdocs at Princeton and the U.S. Geological Survey. Before joining the Yale faculty in 2021, she was a Professor of Ecology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Georgia. Dr. Ezenwa’s research focuses on the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases in wild animal populations, and she studies how within-host interactions between hosts and pathogens translate to larger-scale epidemiological patterns. She has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a Zoetis Award for Veterinary Research Excellence, and a Fulbright Scholar Award. She is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.... C.N.H. Long Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and Director of Microbial Sciences Institute; Chair, Microbial Pathogenesis
Andrew L. Goodman, PhD, is the C. N. H. Long Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis and Director of the Yale Microbial Sciences Institute. Goodman received his undergraduate degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University, his PhD in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Harvard University, and completed postdoctoral training at Washington University. His lab uses microbial genetics, gnotobiotics, and mass spectrometry to understand how gut microbes interact with their host during health and disease. The lab is also interested in how the microbiome impacts the efficacy and toxicity of medical drugs. The lab’s contributions have been recognized by the NIH Director New Innovator Award, the Pew Foundation, the Dupont Young Professors Award, the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation, the Howard... Associate Professor of Epidemiology (Environmental Health Sciences)
Caroline H. Johnson, PhD, is a Tenured Associate Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Yale School of Public Health. She graduated from Imperial College London in 2009 with a PhD in Analytical Chemistry. Since then she has held postdoctoral and staff appointments at the National Cancer Institute and The Scripps Research Institute. Dr. Johnson's research uses mass spectrometry-based metabolomics to understand the role of metabolites in human health. Her primary research interest is to investigate the relationship between genetic and environmental influences (diet, hormones and microbiome) in colon cancer. She is also examining exposures during pregnancy.Associate Professor; CyTOF Core Director, Medicine
Dr. Konnikova's team focuses on the development of early life immunity particularly at barrier sites such as the GI tract and the maternal-fetal interface with a particular focus on T cell biology. Using multi-omic approaches, the group investigates how mucosal homeostasis is developed and what contributes to pathogenesis of diverse diseases such as sepsis, preterm labor, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), very early onset (VEO) and pediatric IBD. The Konnikova lab is further interested in how the microbiome and the associated metabolome regulate immune development and homeostasis at barrier sites. Her group is also interested in how early life events alter circulating immune cells. To this end, in collaboration with the NOuRISH team they are enrolling infants in a longitudinal study of peripheral blood development.Assistant Professor in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
Professor
Noah W. Palm is a Professor of Immunobiology at the Yale University School of Medicine. His laboratory focuses on illuminating the myriad interactions between the immune system and the gut microbiota in health and disease. Dr. Palm performed his doctoral work with Ruslan Medzhitov and his postdoctoral work with Richard Flavell, both at Yale University.