Dr Catherine Blish

Associate Professor of Medicine & Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine

[Host: Prof Clive Gray IDM Member and Head of Div of Immunology]

Catherine Blish, MD, PhD, FIDSA is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Immunology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. As an undergraduate she studied biochemistry at the University of California, Davis, before completing her MD and PhD at the University of Washington. She completed residency in internal medicine and fellowship training in infectious diseases at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. She joined the Stanford faculty in in 2011, where her research is dedicated to learning how to harness the immune system to prevent and cure diseases. Her lab studies human natural killer (NK) cells, a critical first line of defense against viruses and tumours, working to define how human natural killer cells sense and respond to a diverse array of pathogens, including HIV, dengue virus, influenza, and tuberculosis. She divides her time between research, clinical practice in infectious diseases, teaching, and her role as an Associate Director of the Stanford MD-PhD program. She has received numerous awards for research an\d mentoring, including the Stanford Immunology Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award, a NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, and the NIDA Avant-Garde Award for HIV/AIDS Research. She is an elected a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and an Investigator of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub.