29th Annual Woods Hole Immunoparasitology Conference

Dr. Isaac Chiu is a Professor of Immunology at Harvard Medical School. His research explores how neuroimmune interactions drive pain, host defense, and neurodegeneration. He earned his PhD in Immunology in 2009 in Mike Carroll’s lab, followed by postdoctoral fellowships with Tom Maniatis and Clifford Woolf . He established his lab at Harvard in 2014 and was promoted to Professor in 2024. Dr. Chiu’s lab has uncovered mechanisms by which the nervous system senses pathogens to trigger pain and itch, and how sensory neurons communicate with immune cells in barrier tissues to regulate inflammation and host defense. His honors include the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, Chan Zuckerberg Ben Barres Award, Burroughs Wellcome Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease Award, and the Kenneth Rainin Innovators Award.

Dr. Sarah Gaffen is the Gerald P. Rodnan Professor at the University of Pittsburgh Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, where she is the Director of Basic Rheumatology Research. Dr. Gaffen directs a research program focused on the IL-17 superfamily of cytokine receptors. Dr. Gaffen’s lab was among the first to study signaling mechanisms mediated by this novel family of cytokines, and over the years her team has identified many novel mechanisms by which this receptor mediates signal transduction. Treatment of autoimmune diseases has been revolutionized by biologic drugs that neutralize cytokines, in recent years including the Th17/IL-17 pathway. Dr. Gaffen’s work also focuses on molecular signaling mechanisms of autoimmunity and the consequences of anti-cytokine therapy on susceptibility to infections. In that regard, her group was the first to connect IL-17 to oral mucosal infection with the commensal fungus Candida albicans.

Dr. Gaffen received a BS from Carnegie Mellon University and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and completed postdoctoral studies at the University of California at San Francisco and the Gladstone Institute of Virology & Immunology. She has held faculty positions at the State University of New York at Buffalo and has been at the University of Pittsburgh since 2008. Dr. Gaffen has authored more than 150 scientific papers and has been continuously funded by the NIH since 2002. She holds an NIH MERIT award, a Councilor of the International Cytokine and Interferon Society, was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and recently named a 2026 Distinguished Fellow of AAI. 

Dr. Irah King is a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal, Quebec. A focus of Irah’s research program is to unravel mechanisms of host defense against intestinal helminths, with a particular interest in multicellular interactions that simultaneously impact immunity and tissue function. More recently, he has expanded his program to discover local and systemic effects of the gut microbiota on the immune system in the setting of bacterial and parasitic infections. Irah is a long-standing member of the immunoparasitology community, attending WHIP meetings since his days as a postdoc. He currently serves as the Microbiome Theme Leader for the McGill Interdisciplinary Initiative in Infection and Immunity and Director of the McGill Centre for Microbiome Research. He is also a Board Member of the Society for Mucosal Immunology.

To the WHIP community: I am honored to serve as the co-organizer for WHIP this year. The WHIP meeting means a lot to me, and I know how important this meeting is to so many of you. The dedication this community shows year after year to make this conference happen is truly incredible. I have always loved this meeting because of the focus on trainees. I gave my first talk at WHIP in 2005 as a graduate student and have been a regular attendee for the past 24 years! It’s been a pleasure to work with Mark Siracusa planning this year’s meeting. I hope to see y’all at the meeting in September!

About me: Tajie Harris is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Virginia. She received her undergraduate degree from Bemidji State University and her PhD from the University of Wisconsin. At UVA, she is the Director of the Center for Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG), a group of investigators that is focused on neuroimmunology research. She is also the co-Director of the NIH-funded BIG Training Program (T32) that supports graduate student training in neuroimmunology. Dr. Harris’ research has focused on the immune response to Toxoplasma gondii infection of the brain. Her continues to define how immune cells are recruited to the brain, including how cell death and alarmin release are linked to neuroinflammation. Dr. Harris was named a Pinn Scholar at the University of Virginia in 2021 and a Shannon Mid-career Fellow in 2024. In addition to her roles at UVA, she serves on the Organizing Committee for the Americas School of Neuroimmunology and serves as an editor of mBio.

It is an absolute pleasure to work with Dr. Tajie Harris as a co-organizer of the 29^th WHIP meeting.  Like many of you, WHIP has been a fundamental part of my scientific development and I’ve been attending meetings since the early 2000’s. WHIP has not only exposed me to great science but has also introduced me to numerous colleagues and spurred many long-lasting friendships.  It’s fair to say that many of us truly grew up together at WHIP and it’s a true honor to keep the tradition alive.  I’m looking forward to seeing everyone for another great meeting!

About me: Dr. Siracusa received his doctorate in 2008 from Johns Hopkins University where his work focused on understanding how hookworm-induced pulmonary inflammation is regulated by alveolar macrophages. Following his time at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Siracusa continued his training at the University of Pennsylvania where he made seminal discoveries defining the initiation and regulation of innate immune responses to helminth parasites. In 2014 Dr. Siracusa was recruited to the Center for Immunity and Inflammation at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School as the University’s first Chancellor Scholar. Since joining Rutgers, Dr. Siracusa has established a successful NIH-funded research program that has made important advances defining the roles of macrophages and granulocytes in regulating helminth-induced inflammation. Dr. Siracusa is also the president and founder of NemaGen Discoveries, a biotech start-up company that develops novel therapeutics based on pathways discovered while studying host-parasite interactions.