Effective July 1, Dr. Sabine Ehrt— Basic Science Core Director of NYC TRAC—will become chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Ehrt plans to build on the Department’s strong TB program, recruit faculty in antimicrobial resistance and malaria, and foster collaborations with the Cornell Center for Antimicrobial Resistance Research and the College of Veterinary Medicine. She also aims to expand mentoring for junior scientists.
Dr. Ehrt joined Weill Cornell in 1999 and is now professor of microbiology and immunology and co-chair of the Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis graduate program. She succeeds Dr. Carl Nathan, Developmental Core Director of NYC TRAC, who headed the department since 1998 and will remain on the faculty.
Dr. Ehrt’s research has clarified how M. tuberculosis adapts inside human hosts. She showed that infection re-programs macrophage metabolism, helping the bacterium persist. With Dr. Dirk Schnappinger, she developed a strain of Mycobacterium bovis Bacillus Calmette–Guérin with a dual tetracycline kill switch, allowing researchers to turn off the microbe's reproduction, uncover essential genes, and test vaccine candidates more safely. These tools are used worldwide to identify new TB drug targets.
Her productivity is supported by nine active NIH grants and three Gates Foundation awards. She has published more than 100 papers, cited over 17,000 times, and has edited leading journals such as mBio and PLOS Pathogens. She has chaired Gordon Research and Keystone conferences on TB and earned multiple mentoring awards. Please find more details of her previous work here.