The Board of Regents has approved the appointment of Bethany B. Moore, Ph.D., as chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the Medical School, effective April 1, 2021. She had served as interim chair of the department since July 2019.

Dr. Moore is the Nancy Williams Walls Professor of Microbiology and Immunology and a professor of internal medicine in the Medical School. She received her Bachelor of Arts in microbiology from the University of Texas at Austin and her Ph.D. in immunology from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. She completed postdoctoral studies at UT Southwestern in 1994, and then at Stanford University in 1997. She joined the U-M faculty that year as a research investigator. She rose through the ranks to associate professor in 2006 and professor in 2011. She held the Galen B. Toews, M.D. Collegiate Professorship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine from 2016-20, and was named the Walls Professor in November 2020.

She is an internationally recognized expert in the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis, and in the regulation of innate and adaptive immunity post-stem cell transplant. Her laboratory also has active projects related to secondary pneumonia post-influenza and innate immune alterations in diabetes. She has had continuous National Institutes of Health grant funding since 1998, and she has published more than 200 peer-reviewed research articles in prominent journals.

In addition to her research activities, she served as director of the Immunology Graduate Program from 2012-19, and directed the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research Postdoctoral Translational Scholars Program from 2013-15. She has held past leadership roles in the Medical School, including chair of the Biomedical Research Council and the University Committee on the Use and Care of Animals (now IACUC). She has also served on the campus-wide ADVANCE STRIDE and Rackham’s MORE mentoring committees. She is an associate editor for JCI Insight and holds leadership roles in the American Thoracic Society (ATS) and American Association of Immunologists.

Among her honors, she received a Young Investigator Award from the Central Society for Clinical Research and a Career Development Award from the American Lung Association of Michigan. In 2014, she received a Recognition Award for Scientific Accomplishment from the ATS and that same year was inducted into the University of Michigan Medical School League of Research Excellence. In 2019, she was honored with the Rackham Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award.

“I am humbled and honored to be chosen to lead this storied department originally founded in 1902.  My goals are to retain our strong research focus in microbial pathogenesis but to expand our expertise and interests in infectious disease and immune response as well,” said Moore. “The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly highlighted the critical importance of research in microbiology and immunology going forward and we hope Michigan will be a world leader in this regard.”