Eric G. Pamer, MD
Donald F. Steiner Professor, Department of Medicine
Professor, Departments of Microbiology and Pathology
Eric Pamer is a board certified physician in internal medicine and infectious diseases. He received his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University and completed his residency and clinical fellowship at the University of California, San Diego. As an infectious diseases expert, he specializes in immune defense against infections associated with cancer treatment. He is an accomplished scientist whose research focuses on the microbiome’s impact on resistance to a wide range of microbial pathogens.
Assistant: Noreen Bentley nbentley@bsd.uchicago.edu
John Alverdy, MD
John C. Alverdy, MD, performs a wide variety of complex minimally invasive and open gastrointestinal surgical procedures with decades of experience in the field. Dr. Alverdy is nationally recognized for introducing several new operations into the field, including minimally invasive pancreatic surgery, bariatric surgery, and surgery for disorders of the foregut including the esophagus and stomach. Dr. Alverdy is one of the University of Chicago Hospitals’ most accomplished critical care surgeons and serves as the director for the Surgical Treatment of Obesity Program.
In addition to his strength as a clinician, Dr. Alverdy has an active research lab. He has been awarded several research grants for his breakthrough work into the pathophysiology of GI disorders. He is respected for his excellence as an instructor, having won numerous teaching awards.
Eugene B. Chang, MD
Eugene B. Chang received his medical degree and conducted his internship, residency and fellowship at the University of Chicago. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology. Dr. Chang has been an active participant in the NIH Human Microbiome Project and has helped establish and administer most of the microbiome core facilities that are being used by investigators in the Biological Science Division (BSD) at the University of Chicago.
Erika C. Claud, MD
Professor, Departments of Pediatrics and Medicine
Erika Claud received her combined undergraduate and medical degree at Northwestern University through the six year Honors Program in Medical Education, and then completed both her residency in Pediatrics and fellowship in Neonatology at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago. She is NIH funded to investigate the role of microbes in intestinal development of the preterm infant and leads the MIND (Microbiome in Neonatal Development) cohort.
Thomas F. Gajewski, MD, PhD
Professor, Departments of Pathology, Medicine, and Ben May Department of Cancer Research
Thomas Gajewski, MD, PhD, received his medical training at the University of Chicago where he now investigates and develops new treatments for patients with melanoma. He has a special interest in the development of immunotherapies against this disease. Dr. Gajewski also leads development of immune-based therapies for other cancers, using new laboratory data on how the immune system is regulated to develop novel clinical trials.
T. Conrad Gilliam, PhD
Marjorie I. and Bernard A. Mitchell Distinguished Service Professor, Human Genetics
Interim Chair, Department of Microbiology
Conrad Gilliam, received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Missouri/Columbia in 1981. He then completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in molecular genetics at the University of London, followed by a second postdoctoral fellowship in molecular genetics at Harvard. He joined the University of Chicago in 2004 where his research focuses on the identification and characterization of heritable mutations that affect the nervous system, including genetic mapping of neuropsychiatric disease mutations and characterization of their downstream consequences. He is a leading authority on the multigenic inheritance of common genetic disorders including neuropsychiatric disorders, cardiovascular disease, and autoimmune disorders.
Tatyana Golovkina, PhD
Tatyana Golovkina completed her graduate studies at the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences Cancer Research Center, Moscow, USSR. Her postdoctoral training was in the laboratory of Susan Ross, first at the University of Illinois in Chicago, then the University of Pennsylvania. She joined the Department of Microbiology at the University of Chicago in 2005 where she studies how the innate immune system detects retroviral infection and initiates virus-neutralizing adaptive immune responses. She is also interested in mechanisms evolved by retroviruses to overcome host protective responses.