Congratulations to Dr. Jeniel Nett who has been awarded the Vilas Faculty Early Career Investigator Award which recognizes research and teaching excellence in faculty who are relatively early in their careers. This is a great honor and it confirms the high esteem in which she is held by the Dean of the School of Medicine and Public Health, Robert Golden, and by her colleagues in the Departments of Medicine and Medical Microbiology & Immunology.
The award provides flexible funds to be used in pursuit of Dr. Nett’s ongoing research which seeks to identify signaling pathways inhibiting neutrophil function during fungal biofilm growth. Understanding of how biofilms evade the host response will facilitate the design of novel biofilm-specific therapeutics by targeting organism components responsible for host immune dysfunction.