Why Are Diseases of Affluence and Age Rising?
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
9:00 – 10:00 AM ET | WEBINAR
SPEAKER
Kate Jeffrey, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Medicine
Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Associate Member, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University
2010 Women & Science Postdoctoral Fellow, The Rockefeller University
HOST
Alexander Tarakhovsky, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Plutarch Papamarkou Professor
Laboratory of Immune Cell Epigenetics and Signaling
The Rockefeller University
The incidences of chronic inflammatory diseases such as allergies, arthritis, and diabetes are rising in Western societies at alarming rates, and genetics alone cannot explain this increase. Former Rockefeller University Women & Science Fellow Kate Jeffrey, Ph.D., explores how the epigenome integrates the dynamic relationship between humans and their environment and is a possible cause and drug discovery target for these diseases of affluence and age.
Dr. Jeffrey is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, an associate in immunology at Massachusetts General Hospital, a faculty member of immunology and virology at Harvard University, and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University. Dr. Jeffrey pursued her undergraduate studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and completed her Ph.D. with Professor Charles Mackay at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia. She conducted her postdoctoral research at Rockefeller University with Alexander Tarakhovsky, M.D., Ph.D., during which time she received a Women & Science fellowship.
In 2012, she launched her independent laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She and her team now study host-pathogen interactions—work that is essential for developing therapies to improve human health. Dr. Jeffrey has also served as an immunology editor with Nature Medicine and co-founded the Imagine Science Film Festival in New York City.