Evelyn Kurt-Jones, Ph.D.

Talk Title: Innate immune receptors and the pathogenesis of viral infections

Evelyn Kurt-Jones, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Medicine and the Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School.  She received her BS in Biology from Jackson College at Tufts University and her PhD in Biomedical Science from the University of Connecticut Health Center.  She was a post-doctoral fellow with Dr. Emil Unanue at Harvard Medical School.

She started her laboratory at Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute where she studied innate immune receptor signaling for inflammatory cytokine responses.  During this time, she established long-term collaborations with Dr. Robert Finberg and Dr. Douglas Golenbock that led to the discovery of the key role of Toll-like receptors in the immunopathology of viral infections, including RSV, HSV and EMCV. 

Recently, along with Dr. Finberg, she identified a novel susceptibility factor for RNA viruses that plays a critical role in type I interferon responses to +sense RNA viruses.