My interests lie in vaccine development. Specifically I am working on the human pathogen Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Ng). In 2012 there were greater than 330,000 new gonorrhea cases in the US and more than 100 million cases worldwide. Gonorrhea can present as urethritis in men and more seriously, pelvic inflammatory disease with infertility as a possible outcome in women. While this outcome is preventable with antibiotic treatment, the rapid development of resistance has led the CDC to identify Ng as an “immediate public health threat that requires urgent and aggressive action” towards new therapeutics and vaccines. This drive for innovation faces a significant challenge in the human-specific adaptations of Ng. We are working with our collaborators to develop a humanized transgenic mouse model of disease that will serve as the platform for our future testing of Neisseria gonorrhoeae vaccine antigen candidates.