Tammy Kielian, Ph.D.

Tammy Kielian received her Ph.D. from the University of Kansas Medical Center in 1998 and performed a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroimmunology at Dartmouth Medical School. In 2001, she established her independent laboratory at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and was recruited to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 2008 where she is a professor and holds the Choudari Kommineni, DVM, Ph.D. Endowed Professor of Pathology.

Dr. Kielian’s research interests span the fields of neuroimmunology, infectious diseases, and neuroscience with a unifying theme of innate immunity.  Her laboratory has a long-standing interest in studying the pathogenesis and immune responses elicited by Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) in the CNS, with a particular emphasis on microglial and astrocyte activation. Her group utilizes a mouse model of S. aureus craniotomy infection that was developed in her laboratory to understand the mechanisms that prevent bacterial clearance in an immune competent host. Her group is also performing translational studies with samples from patients with craniotomy infection to identify leukocyte molecular signatures that are responsible for infection persistence.

Dr. Kielian has served as a regular and ad-hoc member on numerous NIH study section panels and her research program has been continuously funded by the NIH since its inception in 2001.