Erika Pearce

Dr. Pearce earned her Ph.D. in 2005 from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where she investigated the regulation of T cell responses during infection. She continued at Penn for her postdoctoral training, where she initiated pioneering studies on how modulating cellular metabolism can enhance immune responses to infection and cancer. In 2009, she launched her independent career, holding faculty positions at the Trudeau Institute in New York and later at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. In 2015, she relocated her research group to Europe to serve as a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany. Her contributions to the field have been widely recognized, including the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2018 for her work on the role of metabolism in regulating immune responses, and the AAI-BD Investigator Award in 2020 for her early-career achievements. In 2021, Dr. Pearce returned to the United States to join Johns Hopkins University as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor. Her laboratory focuses on uncovering the cellular and molecular mechanisms that govern immune responses, with particular emphasis on the role of metabolism. Ultimately, her work aims to inform new strategies for modulating immune cell longevity, differentiation, and function to improve human health.