By
Matt Wood
Assistant Director of Communications, Biological Sciences Division
Many scientists can point to a core memory or central figure who sparked their interest in science at an early age: a field trip to a museum, wildlife shows on Saturday morning TV, or a charismatic high school teacher. Shabaana Khader, PhD, didn’t have to look far for inspiration; Her mother was the first woman OB/GYN specialist doctor in her village in India, whose clinic also served as a primary care center and happened to have a microbiology lab embedded in the clinic. “I would spend my summers looking through the microscope at any microbe they could smear and see on a slide,” she said. “I think the fascination started there and it stuck for the rest of my life.”
Khader has taken that early fascination with the microscope and turned it into a robust academic research career, moving from the tropical bacteria and diseases she saw in her mother’s small rural lab to PhD work on leprosy, to what has formed the bulk of her career: studying Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the bacteria that cause tuberculosis. Now, as the Bernard and Betty Roizman Professor and new Chair of the Department of Microbiology at the University of Chicago, she plans to tap into a burgeoning campus community of scientists examining life under the microscope and build a hub of microbiology research geared toward facing the emerging threats of a changing world.
‘The empowerment of having a leadership platform’
While the COVID-19 pandemic was turning many of us into armchair experts on infectious diseases, vaccine development, and the immune system, research institutions around the world reevaluated the investments they needed to make to prepare for the next outbreak. The pandemic underscored the urgent need to understand the emergence of new infectious diseases, especially as climate change threatens to spread more pathogens to more parts of the world through warming temperatures and disruption of wildlife ecosystems. Like many universities, UChicago pledged to invest more resources toward studying infectious disease, from hiring research faculty and staff to building out laboratory infrastructure. To Khader, this was an ideal opportunity for the next step in her career.
“Studying emerging and reemerging infections is now a national priority, and if you want to remain competitive as a microbiology department, you have to invest resources in that space,” she said. “The University of Chicago recognized that and showed they were willing to put the resources on the table with a vision for building an inclusive, diverse department that is nationally recognized for infectious diseases and microbiology research. All those things came together, and it was the right time.”
Before coming to UChicago in September 2022, Khader had a taste of leadership experience when she served as interim chair of the Department of Microbiology at Washington University in St. Louis from 2018 to 2019. That role gave her an idea of what kind of academic community she would like to build.
“That opportunity helped me experience the empowerment of having a leadership platform, but from the point of view as a woman of color and seeing what representation really means,” she said. “I saw that I really wanted to do something bigger than my own research program, and that is to build a community.”
Outside the Department, UChicago has many pockets of excellence in microbiology. Much of this work is focused on the microbiome, or the larger study of microbes and their ecosystems, but this expertise is situated in various departments, centers, and institutes. For example, the Duchossois Family Institute, which focuses on harnessing the microbiome to improve human health, draws from the Departments of Medicine, Pathology, Microbiology, and more; the Microbiome Center, which investigates microbial systems across different ecosystems, includes more faculty from the Departments of Ecology and Evolution, Surgery, Public Health Sciences, among others, as well as researchers from Argonne National Laboratory and the Marine Biological Laboratory. One of her first priorities as Chair, Khader said, is to bring these pockets together to build a cohesive community of microbiologists, whether they are studying how a virus interacts with the immune system or the ecological context of commensal bacteria.
“I want to create an inclusive environment where all the microbiologists on campus and our affiliates can interact. No matter which department or center they are in, they should feel like they are in a community,” she said.
Expanding the concept of a microbiology department
Khader’s own research focuses on tuberculosis and how it interacts with the immune system. Recently, her lab published a study showing how different immune cells work together to help billions of people tolerate TB infections without becoming sick. Understanding this basic biology could inform better vaccine design for a disease that still causes 1.5 million deaths annually.
As the department focuses on recruiting more faculty to tackle the threats of new infectious diseases, drug resistant bacteria, and the attendant effects of climate change, Khader hopes to leverage insights like this with existing expertise on campus to expand the concept of what a microbiology department can be.
“It’s about thinking of microbiology more as an interdisciplinary field, not just what we are able to do in a dish but thinking about how that will translate to human health,” she said. “Whether it's in the context of global emergencies or in the context of changing lifestyles, how are those new pathogens going to interact when you place them in new microbiomes or populations?”
“There are so many opportunities to build partnerships to address these questions at UChicago, and I’m excited to build that kind of community.”
