The joint cluster hiring initiative that brought Professors Kevin Bonham and Cammie Lesser to Tufts University is designed to strengthen interdisciplinary research and teaching across multiple departments. This initiative reflects President Sunil Kumar’s commitment to fostering collaboration driving biomedical innovation and addressing health disparities.

Interdisciplinary faculty hires are essential for breaking down barriers and driving groundbreaking discoveries in biomedical research  said President Kumar. By uniting experts across fields, we enhance research capabilities elevate education and accelerate medical advancements that improve patient care.

The joint cluster hiring initiative that brought Professors Kevin Bonham and Cammie Lesser to Tufts University is designed to strengthen interdisciplinary research and teaching across multiple departments. This initiative reflects President Sunil Kumar’s commitment to fostering collaboration, driving biomedical innovation, and addressing health disparities.

Interdisciplinary faculty hires are essential for breaking down barriers and driving groundbreaking discoveries in biomedical research  said President Kumar. By uniting experts across fields, we enhance research capabilities, elevate education, and accelerate medical advancements that improve patient care.

Dr. Bonham’s extensive investigation of the role of specific members of the gut microbiome in promoting or inhibiting infant neural development synergizes with several programs, including at least two at the Mother Infant Research Institute (MIRI). Our pediatrics and GI teams, as well as the Department of Immunology at TUSM are thrilled to incorporate Dr. Bonham’s expertise. 

Dr. Cammie Lesser received her MD/PhD from the University of California San Francisco. She performed her internship and internal medicine residency, followed by a clinical and research fellowship in infectious disease at the University of Washington with Dr. Sam Miller. Board certified in infectious diseases, Dr. Lesser was recruited to Massachusetts General Hospital as an attending physician and researcher in 2003 and promoted to associate professor in 2012. She holds numerous research-based affiliations at Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School. She is also an associate member of the Broad and Ragon Institutes.

Dr. Lesser’s laboratory investigates how bacterial pathogens use type 3 secretion systems to evade mammalian immune responses. She has pioneered experimental platforms to study secreted proteins in innate immune cells and has become a leader in synthetic microbiology. By engineering probiotic bacteria to deploy therapeutic proteins, she has developed designer probiotics to combat intestinal diseases like inflammatory bowel disease and enteric infections. Her work is now expanding into cancer treatment, highlighting the translational impact of her research. 

Dr. Cammie Lesser is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking research and innovative contributions to microbiology and infectious diseases. She is a frequent speaker at global and national conferences and was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology in 2018. Over her career, she has served on 17 scientific review panels, spent four years as an NIH study section member, and is part of the scientific advisory boards for the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) Shigella Meeting and Synlogic. She holds multiple patents and regularly publishes in top-tier journals such as Science, PNAS, Nature, Cell Host & Microbe, eLife, mBio, PLoS Pathogens, and Nature Methods. Additionally, she is an editor for three scientific journals and is the incoming Editor-in-Chief of Current Opinions in Microbiology, a leading journal in microbiology and infectious diseases. She also serves on the Standing Committee on Elections at the American Academy of Microbiology.

Dr. Lesser has maintained 23 years of continuous research funding since her postdoctoral K08 award and has served as the primary investigator on 27 grants, including five active awards. Among her many honors, she has received the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award, the EUREKA  Award, and the Rainin Foundation Innovator Award.

A dedicated educator and mentor, Dr. Lesser is deeply committed to training the next generation of biomedical leaders. She continues to provide patient care and supervise medical students, residents, and fellows, with a strong passion for mentoring physician-scientists an expertise she brings to her new role at Tufts University.

Source: https://medicine.tufts.edu/news-events/news/second-joint-hire-advances-microbiome-research