Bruce Klein, MD
Dr. Klein serves as Program Director. He is Professor of Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, and Medical Microbiology and Immunology. He was formerly Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Pediatrics, and currently is the Chief of the Division Infectious Disease in the Department of Pediatrics. He has a joint faculty appointment in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, and of Internal Medicine where he is a member of the adult Infectious Disease section. Dr. Klein is internationally recognized for his research on the immunology and pathogenesis of infections due to systemic dimorphic fungi, particularly Blastomyces dermatitidis. He was formerly Chair of Division F (Medical Mycology) of the ASM; Chair and co-organizer of the 1st ASM sponsored International Meeting on the Systemic Dimorphic Fungi, held in Denver CO, March 2007; and the current Chair of the Dimorphic Fungal Genome Sequencing Consortium at the Broad Institute at MIT. Dr. Klein’s research program is well funded by NIH with several active grants for work on immunology and pathogenesis. He is the recipient of an NIH MERIT award and a Scholar of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Hartwell Foundation. He is a former regular member of the NIH BM-2 Study Section, and continues to Ad Hoc on PTHE and Vaccine Study Sections. He has served on the Editorial Board of Infection and Immunity, and as an ad hoc reviewer for numerous other scientific journals. Dr. Klein has been deeply involved in UW-Madison scholarly activities, having previously served as chair of the university’s Executive Committee on Tenure and Promotion in the Biological Sciences. Dr. Klein has taught and teaches in numerous medical and graduate courses, including: Infection and Immunity (MMI 620-701-3); Immunology of Infectious Disease (Mansfield director; MMI 790); Topics in Immunology (Gumperz director; MMI 720); Topics in Microbiology (Ruby director; MMI 810 & 811); Medical Mycology (Woods director; MMI 410); and Fungal Biology and Genetics (Keller director; MMI 655). Dr. Klein has been a trainer in this T32 Training Program, lectured and participated in the major training tool and seminar, MPHRG/Symbiosis, and currently serves as the thesis advisor for a T32 supported trainee (Nicole Cooney). He served as a longtime member of the admissions committee for the MSTP program. He has trained or is training 7 PhD or MD/PhD students in his lab, and has sat on »30 PhD thesis committees. There are presently 4 PhD or MD/PhD students and 4 PhD or MD postdoctoral fellows that work in his laboratory.
Heidi Goodrich-Blair, Ph.D.
Dr. Goodrich-Blair serves as Codirector of the Training Program. She joined the UW-Madison faculty in 1997 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2003. Upon arriving at UW, she initiated her current work on the bacterium Xenorhabdus nematophila, a mutualist of nematodes and a pathogen of insects. Her goal is to understand what features of the host-microbe interface dictate beneficial or detrimental fitness outcomes for the host. Thus, her interests span and integrate the concepts of microbes in health and disease. She is an international authority in this field. Dr. Goodrich-Blair inspired the UW-Madison Symbiosis Cluster hires, and cochaired the search committee with her colleague Dr. Forest (a program trainer). She now serves as Director of the UW Symbiosis group, overseeing the annual Symbiosis Symposium, and monthly internal Symbiosis Group Meeting. She was co-PI on a recent NSF grant (IOS-641690) that funded a workshop "Strengthening Research Collaborations and Knowledge Dissemination in Nematode-Bacterium Partnerships" that she organized and convened in 2007. She is on the organizing committee for the 2008 ASM Beneficial Microbes Conference, to be held in San Diego, CA, and is the organizer for the International Symbiosis Society 2009 Congress, to be held in Madison. Since 2003, Dr. Goodrich-Blair has served annually on NSF review panels, including on a newly formed Symbiosis, Defense, and Self-Recognition panel. She is PI on RO1 GM-059776 on Molecular Mechanisms of X. nematophila-host interactions. She received a Burroughs Wellcome Fund "Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease" to study the pathogenesis of X. nematophila in insects as a model of innate immunity to bacterial pathogens. Finally, she was the PI on a collaborative grant from NSF (IBN-0416783) to study cellular and metabolic aspects of bacterium-nematode mutualism.
Dr. Goodrich-Blair has been deeply involved in the MDTP from which all of her Ph.D. students have been drawn. She has served on the Advising, Admissions, Recruitment, and Steering committees, and has served as Director since 2005. She has been a trainer on this T32 training grant since its inception, and a Steering Committee member. She is the instructor for Microbial Physiology (Micro 526); a coinstructor with Dr. McFall-Ngai for Microbial Interactions (Bact 875/ MMI 677); and a lecturer in Microbial Pathogenesis (MMI 740, Dillard instructor), and in the MPHRG/Symbiosis group meetings. She is mentoring or has mentored thesis research for 8 PhD and 7 MS students, and has supervised 2 postdoctoral fellows. She has had 23 undergraduate trainees in her lab, including 5 underrepresented minorities and 17 women; 5 of these students were from the NSF-funded Bacteriology Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program, which offers opportunities to underrepresented students from non-research institutions. Dr. Goodrich-Blair has served or is serving on 58 graduate student committees, including 19 in labs of 9 trainers on this application.
Duties
The administrative duties of the director and codirector have been carefully delineated. Dr. Klein is in charge of the day-to-day operation of the Training Grant and is responsible specifically for the postdoctoral component. Dr. Klein will be aided in the oversight of MD postdoctoral fellows by Dr. David Andes; he is a trainer on this grant and serves as the faculty head of the adult ID Fellowship program. Dr. Goodrich-Blair is responsible for the predoctoral component of the Training Program. Dr. Klein will devote 10% of his effort to this training program, and Dr. Goodrich Blair, 5% of her effort. Dr. Klein takes over for Dr. Jon Woods as PI and director due to his background as a physician scientist, with Dr. Goodrich-Blair codirecting in view of her role as director of MDTP (Dr. Woods previously directed the MDTP). The codirectorship of our program thus mirrors the expanded mission of training both pre- and post-doctoral trainees.
