School of Medicine
Showing 21-30 of 43 Results
-
Michael R. Howitt
Assistant Professor of Pathology and of Microbiology and Immunology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur lab is broadly interested in how intestinal microbes shape our immune system to promote both health and disease. Recently we discovered that a type of intestinal epithelial cell, called tuft cells, act as sentinels stationed along the lining of the gut. Tuft cells respond to microbes, including parasites, to initiate type 2 immunity, remodel the epithelium, and alter gut physiology. Surprisingly, these changes to the intestine rely on the same chemosensory pathway found in oral taste cells. Currently, we aim to 1) elucidate the role of specific tuft cell receptors in microbial detection. 2) To understand how protozoa and bacteria within the microbiota impact host immunity. 3) Discover how tuft cells modulate surrounding cells and tissue.
-
KC Huang
LeRa Professor and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology
On Leave from 01/01/2026 To 03/31/2026Current Research and Scholarly InterestsHow do cells determine their shape and grow?
How do molecules inside cells get to the right place at the right time?
Our group tries to answer these questions using a systems biology approach, in which we integrate interacting networks of protein and lipids with the physical forces determined by the spatial geometry of the cell. We use theoretical and computational techniques to make predictions that we can verify experimentally using synthetic, chemical, or genetic perturbations. -
Peter K. Jackson
Professor of Microbiology and Immunology (Baxter Labs) and of Pathology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCell cycle and cyclin control of DNA replication .
-
Christine Jacobs-Wagner
Dennis Cunningham Professor, Professor of Biology and of Microbiology and Immunology
BioChristine Jacobs-Wagner is a Dennis Cunningham Professor in the Department of Biology and the ChEM-H Institute at Stanford University. She is interested in understanding the fundamental mechanisms and principles by which cells, and, in particular, bacterial cells, are able to multiple. She received her PhD in Biochemistry in 1996 from the University of Liège, Belgium where she unraveled a molecular mechanism by which some bacterial pathogens sense and respond to antibiotics attack to achieve resistance. For this work, she received multiple awards including the 1997 GE & Science Prize for Young Life Scientists. During her postdoctoral work at Stanford Medical School, she demonstrated that bacteria can localize regulatory proteins to specific intracellular regions to control signal transduction and the cell cycle, uncovering a new, unsuspected level of bacterial regulation.
She started her own lab at Yale University in 2001. Over the years, her group made major contributions in the emerging field of bacterial cell biology and provided key molecular insights into the temporal and spatial mechanisms involved in cell morphogenesis, cell polarization, chromosome segregation and cell cycle control. For her distinguished work, she received the Pew Scholars award from the Pew Charitable Trust, the Woman in Cell Biology Junior award from the American Society of Cell Biology and the Eli Lilly award from the American Society of Microbiology. She held the Maxine F. Singer and William H. Fleming professor chairs at Yale. She was elected to the Connecticut academy of Science, the American Academy of Microbiology and the National Academy of Sciences. She has been an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 2008.
Her lab moved to Stanford in 2019. Current research examines the general principles and spatiotemporal mechanisms by which bacterial cells replicate, using Caulobacter crescentus and Escherichia coli as models. Recently, the Jacobs-Wagner lab expanded their interests to the Lyme disease agent Borrelia burgdorferi, revealing unsuspected ways by which this pathogen grows and causes disease -
Prasanna Jagannathan
Associate Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and of Microbiology and Immunology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsWe study innate immunity and immune regulation of Plasmodium Falciparum malaria in children and pregnant women. Our work focuses on understanding how malaria shapes the immune state in individuals following repeated exposure. We are also testing novel interventions to enhance protective immunity against malaria in children via large, randomized controlled trials. Our work in malaria has been based in Eastern Uganda, where malaria transmission is among the highest in the world.
-
Karla Kirkegaard
Violetta L. Horton Professor and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe biochemistry of RNA-dependent RNA polymerase function, the cell biology of the membrane rearrangements induced by positive-strand RNA virus infection of human cells, and the genetics of RNA viruses, which, with their high error rates, live at the brink of error catastrophe, are investigated in the Kirkegaard laboratory.
-
Holden Maecker
Professor (Research) of Microbiology and Immunology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI'm interested in immune monitoring of T cell responses to chronic pathogens and cancer, and the correlation of T cell response signatures with disease protection.
-
Edward Mocarski
Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research interests focused on the biology and pathogenesis of cytomegalovirus (CMV), an opportunistic pathogen that causes significant disease worldwide, reporting discoveries in areas of CMV gene regulation, DNA replication and packaging, maturation, impact on the host cell, disease pathogenesis, latency and reactivation, host cell death signaling and chemokine system. In the last 20 years of my academic career, we studied viral cell death suppressors and discovered ZBP1-RIPK3 necroptosis.
-
Denise M. Monack
Martha Meier Weiland Professor in the School of Medicine
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe primary focus of my research is to understand the genetic and molecular mechanisms of intracellular bacterial pathogenesis. We use several model systems to study complex host-pathogen interactions in the gut and in immune cells such as macrophages and dendritic cells. Ultimately we would like to understand how Salmonella persists within certain hosts for years in the face of a robust immune response.
-
Antonio J. Pagán
Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe Pagán lab is interested in the regulation of immunity and pathogenesis in tuberculosis (TB). TB is characterized by the formation of multicellular aggregates of immune cells called granulomas. We leverage the powerful genetics and imaging capabilities of genetically diverse fish models of TB, which capture key features of human TB granulomas, to address fundamental questions in mycobacterial pathogenesis and granuloma immunobiology.