Cheryl Day, PhD

Dr. Day is the Co-Director of the Basic and Translational Science Core for the TRAC. She received her PhD in Virology from Harvard University in 2003. She completed her post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford investigating the phenotype and function of HIV-specific CD8 T cells. While a post-doc at Oxford, she obtained additional funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to conduct HIV cellular immunology research in Durban, South Africa, and eventually expanded her immunology studies in Durban to include tuberculosis (TB) and HIV co-infection. She subsequently joined the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative at the University of Cape Town to pursue research on T cell immunology in individuals with latent TB infection and active pulmonary TB disease. In 2010, Dr. Day joined Emory University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Health at the Rollins School of Public Health. In 2013, Dr. Day joined the faculty of the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at Emory’s School of Medicine. She is currently an Associate Professor with a research program based on investigation of mechanisms regulating T cell immunity in TB and TB/HIV co-infection, as well as defining the phenotypic and functional characteristics of T cells and natural killer (NK) cells that are associated with successful immune control of TB infection. She is also investigating the effect of maternal HIV exposure on innate immune response to BCG vaccination in Kenyan infants.