Education:

2016–2023: Postdoctoral Fellow
Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Surgery

2016: Ph.D. in Microbiology
University of Maine, Department of Molecular and Biomedical Sciences

2010: B.S. in Microbiology
B.S. in Biochemistry/Molecular and Cellular Biology
University of Maine, Orono, Maine

Research/Teaching Interests: 

• Host-pathogen interactions
• Fungal infections
• Innate immunity: neutrophils

Research/Teaching Interests:

My laboratory is focused on studying host-pathogen interactions, especially the role of neutrophils in antifungal defense. While neutrophils have long been appreciated to play a role in host defense, the mechanisms by which they accomplish this remain incompletely understood. 

Recent work has characterized a novel behavior of neutrophils, termed “neutrophil swarming”. In swarming, neutrophils defy the typical paradigm of acting as lone warriors and work together to coordinate the activity of many neutrophils against a single target. This behavior allows the neutrophils to attack and restrict the spread of invading pathogens that individual neutrophils would not be able to control, something that could be particularly relevant to fungal pathogens as many can alter their morphology to become too large to be individually phagocytosed. 

Unfortunately swarming and its role during infection and inflammation are poorly understood. The current goals of my laboratory include investigating the molecular mechanisms that govern and control swarming formation and its effectiveness against diverse fungal pathogens. Our long-term goals are to define the role of swarming in shaping the effectiveness and outcome of infections in the host, both in healthy individuals and in patient populations at risk of invasive fungal infections. This will be leveraged to design novel augmentative therapies for those most susceptible to infection.