Infectious diseases are responsible for the deaths of over nine million people annually worldwide. Many of these infections, such as tuberculosis (caused by the intracellular bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis) and typhoid fever (caused by the Salmonella typhi bacteria), develop a persistent infection that can endure for the life of the host. Our lab is primarily concerned with how the immune system reacts to these bacterial infections and how it might be possible to design better vaccines to respond to, and eliminate, the pathogens that cause these infections.

We investigate these immune responses using sophisticated immunological tools in an attempt to understand how immunity develops during infection and immunization. We are particularly interested in how immunity differs between distinctive anatomical sites of the body, how certain immune cells (such as mast cells and T cells) regulate immunity, why men and women respond differently to immunological insults, and how we can exploit knowledge we gain to develop better vaccines.