Director, Center for Human Immunobiology
Northwestern University
Chicago, Illinois, United States
About Stephanie Eisenbarth, MD, PhD
Career path
1. How did you first get involved in immunology?
I am very fortunate in that I had an amazing mentor as an MD, PhD student, Kim Bottomly, who was in the Immunobiology Division at Yale, and who I did my PhD work with. I really fell in love with immunology. It was an amazing experience. I got to work in an area that I wound up working in for a very long time and still work on, which is allergy and what drives allergy. So that was my first real research experience in immunology and it was one that hooked me from the beginning.
2. Tell us about the research you’re most proud of.
Really I’m proud of all of our research over these many years. Currently, what we’re working on is trying to understand how the immune system responds to things that it shouldn’t. For example, in those with allergies, we respond to things in the environment that most people ignore. We also look at this in terms of alloimmunization, which is when people become sensitized to foreign tissue, like transplants. In particular, we think about this in terms of red blood cell transfusion. I think we’ve made really important discoveries about how the cells of the immune system are organized to create those responses and engender these inappropriate responses. What’s been fun and exciting for us is we can take that information and understand physiologic responses; the flip side of the same coin is to understand how we make a good vaccine responses and protective antibody response to pathogens, for example a viral infection. Those are the basic principles we work on and I think we’ve made exciting discoveries in these areas.
3. What is the most important trait a researcher should possess and why?
I would say creativity. I think what we do as scientists is often seen as very black and white, maybe formulaic, and it’s absolutely not. You need a lot of creativity in thinking about the questions that we’re trying to address and how to address them. Some of the most beautiful science that I’ve seen are ones where creative questions are addressed in a rigorous way, using creative systems, new tools, new models, those types of things. I think creativity is a very important scientific trait.
4. What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned?
As a scientist and as a physician scientist, you need to be open-minded and expect the unexpected. That’s where you find some of the most exciting discoveries.
5. What advice would you give to young researchers just starting out in the field?
To remain excited and to follow your gut. I mean, we do work on the gut, so that was an intended pun. You need to follow the questions that you find most exciting, but also to do it in a way that is a team approach to science. You need mentorship at many different levels. You need good collaborators to work with. Oftentimes, one of the joys of science is you get to collaborate with people all over the globe and to approach questions in a team approach.
6. Describe your average workday.
There is no such a thing. I wear many hats right now. I’m a physician scientist, which means I already have two jobs, but I also am fortunate in that I’m starting some new initiatives at Northwestern, including a new Center for Human Immunobiology and running an amazing Division of Allergy and Immunology, and co-directing with my husband, Adam Williams, a phenomenal research lab. Every day is different. Every day brings new excitement and challenges, but there is not a standard day, I would say.
Personal
7. Who you most admire and why?
I had an amazing father who was also an immunologist and a physician scientist. He approached science in a really incredible way trying to cure Type 1 diabetes. That was his lifelong mission. I was lucky to be exposed through some early discussions about the mysteries of the immune system and I most respected his dedication in trying to cure a disease that obviously has an incredible impact, especially on young children. He did it in a way with joy, love, creativity for science, and I try to emulate that.
8. What motivates you to work hard?
What I do. I love my job. I love working with all the people I get to work with and being a scientist is really very much a privilege. It’s an incredible job with potentially incredible rewards – the ability to potentially change the course of disease, and to discover new fundamental principles. All of these things are amazing joys. Then to be able to do it while working with other incredible people looking at these kinds of questions or challenges from multiple different perspectives, makes you want to work as hard as you possibly can while also balancing things. This probably relates to some other questions we’ll come to, but you also want to make sure you’re doing that in balance with your life and family.
9. Do you have a favorite time management tool?
I live by my calendar. I don’t know if that’s a time management tool, but my calendar is a complex array of interlocking pieces that move constantly. That’s what keeps me going, keeps me on track, with many, many people helping me to do so.
10. Do you have a favorite vacation spot someplace you like to go when you’re not working?
I am again very lucky. I have an amazing husband and two boys who all love snow -we’re all Snowphiles, if that’s a word. We love to ski and snowboard, so Arapahoe Basin in Colorado is probably our all-time favorite place to go.
11. Do you have a favorite beverage or drink?
Beer. I love beer. I’m a beer connoisseur. My joke is that I will spend more money on a really nice glass of beer than on wine.
12. Can you describe your hobbies, other things you like to do when you’re not working?
When I’m not working, I want to spend time with my boys and my husband, so that’s what we mostly do, and we have a great dog. We try to get outdoors and do things. Like I said, we are avid skiers/snowboarders, so even in the summer we try to find places that have snow and go when we can. We now live in Chicago, so it’s a little bit more challenging. The hills are a bit smaller. The East Coast and the West Coast have some of the best and we go there when we can.
Work with FOCIS and FCE's
13. Switching gears, how did you first get involved with FOCIS?
Again, going back to my father, he was involved with FOCIS early on, and when I was a graduate student, he said, some of us are going to be starting a new meeting focused on translational immunology. I think you should come. I said okay. I was in my first or second year of graduate school, so I didn’t know much about any of this, but he said, look, why don’t you come with me? And he brought my mom with him. So the three of us went to Boston for that first meeting and I got to go to the meeting, really compliments of him, and see what this was all about and I’ve been going almost ever since. It’s been a great, great meeting. I am a physician scientist now, so this is a meeting that for me really fulfilled and still fulfills an important niche for us to think about immunology in the context of how it applies to disease and how we do the best possible human-based immunology and translational modeling in order for us to understand immune mediated disease.
14. How do you think FOCIS has changed your world?
I’ve been very fortunate to meet a number of amazing investigators through FOCIS, PhDs, MDs, MD/PhDs, the whole range, obviously with shared interest in understanding the immune system, but from many different vantage points, different subspecialties, different areas of interest, which is unique to FOCIS. There are people thinking about rheumatic disease, autoimmune disease, allergy, transplantation, cancer, all of these things. And that has really opened up the network of people that I have been able to interact with, which has been great. Many of those people I’m now able to teach with and to teach immunology to the next generation. When I have questions, I love to talk to them. Coming at an immune question from different vantage points is incredibly powerful. That network of people has been really phenomenal and I credit FOCIS with a lot of that network.
15. If your colleague asked you why they should join FOCIS, what would you tell them?
Essentially what I just said. This is an unusual and important group of translational immunologists. It’s one of the only places that I know that really concentrates on people doing translational immunology from all these different vantage points. As I started off saying, you don’t want to do science in a bubble or in your own subspecialty. You really want to think about immunology broadly. There are principles that we can glean, which is why, even in my own lab, we think about alloimmunity and allergy in the same breadth. We think about these together and that is powerful. I think FOCIS represents one of the best networks to really gain that kind of exposure and network of colleagues. I’ve just started at Northwestern about a year and a half ago. I was fortunate that Lauren Pachman was instrumental early on in FOCIS and had decided that the Chicago area should be a FOCIS Center of Excellence. Ed Thorp and I have been really excited to take that over. That network is phenomenal and I’ve been telling the folks at Northwestern that we need to expand our membership here and people have been excited to learn about FOCIS.
16. We’re going to talk a little bit now about your FCE. Can you tell us about the research that you’re doing?
Obviously, this is not just me. This is a large team of different kinds of immunologists, studying different types of diseases, everything from Kawasaki’s disease to food allergy (which is what we study), to cardiovascular disease, to pneumonia. There’s amazing research going on at Northwestern and Lurie Children’s. One of the big initiatives that I was fortunate to lead in the last year is to start up a new Center for Human Immunobiology. What’s going on that will dovetail nicely off of this new FCE focused at Northwestern and Lurie Children’s, is to bring together those immunologists who are thinking about human-based questions, either with model systems or with powerful systems of studying human immunology, which has been happening and has been really fun. I think this FOCIS Center of Excellence will epitomize that and will also bring online the next generation, our trainees, because FCEs and FOCIS, in particular, has been very important in bringing trainees into human immunology and helping them also network. That’s one of our next goals for our FCE.
17. What is the vision/your dream goal of your FCE?
I mean, for me, being able to really change the course of disease would be phenomenal. Right now our major focus is trying to understand why food allergy happens and can we reverse it. We have some very exciting findings in which I think we may be able to potentially discover new pathways that, if we target, we might be able to block the most extreme form of allergy, an allergic reaction called anaphylaxis, which can be life-threatening. I think we are getting close to that and that’s one of my all-time goals.
18. What are your biggest challenges?
There are numerous challenges in science and usually we try to approach those as opportunities, as well as challenges. At a practical level doing science, one of the biggest challenges in our day and age is getting enough funds to do what we want to do. Funds are short. There’s incredible philanthropy out there to try to help support research in every field, but especially in immunology. That’s been phenomenal. We see that as one of our opportunities out of that challenge. I think the NIH is an incredible institution that probably could use more money and be able to distribute more money. That’s one of the challenges we see all the time. But again, hopefully that’s going to be a challenge that we all take on. Then there’s obviously scientific challenges all over the place. Doing human immunology is phenomenal and it takes an incredible partnership between clinicians and basic researchers. Building those bridges is another important challenge, but again, it’s an opportunity.
19. Why did you apply to be an FCE?
FOCIS has an amazing global network of FCEs and that network is quite important. These are centers that are all thinking about how we can address fundamental questions in human immunology. My bias is that you can do really important discovery and validation using human samples, especially from the generosity of many different donors. But you also have to do mechanistic work, which often needs to involve animal models and then to go back and forth. That model is really epitomized in many of the FCEs and the network. Again, there’s creativity in how we do all of this. There are opportunities and being able to connect with other immunologists facing the same kind of challenges and sharing ideas and solutions to some of these challenges is important. The FCEs represent one way of doing that.
20. Anything else to add?
There’s another aspect of FOCIS that I’d love to plug because I’m Chair of the Education Committee for FOCIS. I mentioned very briefly that FOCIS has an important role in bringing online the next generation of immunologists, translational immunologists. One way in which FOCIS does this is through our courses. Before every annual meeting, there are amazing basic courses on everything from cancer to systems immunology. We hold annual advanced immunology courses all over the globe now. I’m hoping people will take advantage of them and especially by being an FCE, you have special opportunities for our trainees to take part in those programs and I’m hoping people will do that. Lastly, I would just like to thank both Lauren for establishing the FCE early on and Ed Thorp for being a very important co-director with me for this initiative. I think this will be great and I’m looking forward to Northwestern’s role in the FCEs and in FOCIS.
Those are all the questions for today, thank you for your time.