Research

We study how the body’s outermost barrier tissues, such as the skin and gut, respond to, recover from, and remember environmental stressors, including microbes, injuries, inflammation, and carcinogens. Our work focuses on four major research areas:

Host-microbe interactions

Our bodies host a diverse garden of commensal bacteria, fungi, and viruses. These microbes are not mere bystanders; they provide vital signals that sustain our physiological processes. Our lab focuses on the mechanisms and conseq[...]

Immune-tissue crosstalk

Immune cells are ubiquitous, residing in every part of our body, particularly in our barrier tissues that interface with the environment. Healthy skin and gut, for example, are home to ~80 billion and 50 billion immune cells, res[...]

Inflammatory memory

Memory, the ability to remember past encounters and change behavior, is a hallmark of the immune system and the basis of vaccination. However, we discovered that the memory of inflammation is not exclusive to the immune system bu[...]

Translational research

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) is part of the Mount Sinai hospital system in New York City, granting us unique access to large and diverse patient cohorts with a range of inflammatory conditions. Leveraging t[...]