Nicole Baumgarth

NICOLE BAUMGARTH, DVM, PhD, is the inaugural Peetz Family Professor in the W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is also a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor and the inaugural director of the Johns Hopkins Lyme and Tickborne Diseases Research and Education Institute. Dr. Baumgarth is a highly regarded researcher known for efforts to understand host responses to Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease and has made key discoveries on how the Lyme bacterium—transmitted to humans through the bite of black-legged ticks—disrupts the immune system.

Over her career, Dr. Baumgarth has published over 100 papers, including in Nature Immunology, the Journal of Experimental Medicine, Science, and PNAS. She has held various editorial positions, including at the Journal of Immunology, Frontiers in Immunology and the Journal of Immunological Methods. Baumgarth currently chairs the National Institutes of Health’s Cellular and Molecular Immunology B Study Section research grant review standing committee.

A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Baumgarth has received awards for her studies on immunity to Borrelia burgdorferi from the Global Lyme Alliance and the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Educational Foundation.

Dr. Baumgarth received a clinical degree in veterinary medicine and a PhD in microbiology from the School of Veterinary Medicine in Hanover, Germany.