Ellen F Foxman, MD, PhD

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 these viruses. She later joined Dr. Akiko Iwasaki’s group at Yale as a postdoctoral associate, where she demonstrated suppression of innate immune responses in the airway epithelium by cool ambient temperature. In 2016, she established her independent research group at Yale. Contributions of the Foxman Lab include defining biomarkers to track innate immune responses in the human respiratory tract and uncovering evidence for viral interference, in which general antiviral defenses triggered by common cold viruses protect against unrelated viruses such as influenza and COVID-19. Dr. Foxman’s recognitions include the 2018 Hartwell Foundation Individual Biomedical Research Award, the 2021 ASCI Young Physician-Scientist Award, and the 2021 Rita Allen Foundation Scholars Award.