Tera Levin will study pathogenesis through a Burroughs Wellcome Fund program

Tera Levin, assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, has been named a 2024 recipient of the Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease (PATH) program from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

PATH provides assistant professors $500,000 over five years to study the points where the systems of humans and potentially infectious agents connect. The program intends to give recipients the freedom and flexibility to pursue new avenues of inquiry, stimulating higher-risk research projects that hold potential for significantly advancing our understanding of how infectious diseases work and how health is maintained.

Levin will use the funding in her research into how mechanisms of pathogenesis arise from environmental battlegrounds. Her lab researches the evolution of infectious diseases, seeking to understand how the evolutionary “arms races” between hosts and pathogens dynamically shapes the biology of immunity and pathogenesis.