Join us in welcoming Dr. Brian Daniels, our new Assistant Professor! Dr. Daniels is from Greenville, SC and received BA/BS degrees in English and behavioral biology. He began his research career as an undergraduate studying the behavioral consequences of chronic infection with the neurotropic parasite Toxoplasma gondii. He maintained his interest in infectious diseases of the central nervous system as a PhD student in neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis, where he studied interactions between the nervous and immune systems during West Nile virus encephalitis. He pursued postdoctoral training in immunology at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he worked to define specialized host defense mechanisms in the brain to neuroinvasive viruses, including Zika virus. The goal of his lab at Rutgers is to understand how the resident cells of the brain and spinal cord coordinate immune responses to both infection and sterile traumatic injury, with a particular interest in cell types that comprise the blood-brain barrier, the primary physiologic interface between the nervous system and circulating immune cells. Using a combination of mouse models and advanced tissue culture systems, they hope to uncover molecular mechanisms that shape both protective and pathologic neuroinflammation.
