Sarah Cobey
Principal Investigator
Physical Address:
409 Erman Hall
Mailing Address:
114 Zoology Building
1101 E. 57th St.
Chicago, IL 60637
I am a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution, the Program in Biophysics, and the Committee on Microbiology at the University of Chicago. My group investigates the coevolution of pathogens and hosts' adaptive immunity, and we use computational and mathematical tools to test hypotheses and to advance theory. My early work focused on the evolutionary consequences of immune-mediated competition between different pathogen strains, including influenza, pneumococcus, and human papillomavirus. More recently, my focus has expanded to include the dynamics of the host immune response: how chance, infection history, vaccination, age, and other factors shape responses over time. This research involves linking immunology, epidemiology, and virology with ecological and evolutionary principles, and I hope it can lead us to better vaccination strategies.
I graduated from Princeton University, obtained my PhD in Ecology and Evolution from the University of Michigan, and completed a NIH Ruth Kirschstein fellowship at the Harvard School of Public Health. At the University of Chicago, I have been awarded a NIH New Innovator Award, a McDonnell Foundation Complex Systems Scholar Award, and a Neubauer Faculty Development Fellowship.