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Howard Shuman

Professor Department of Microbiology
Committee on Microbiology
The University of Chicago

Howard Shuman

Howard Shuman received his undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in Microbiology. He did graduate work at Harvard Medical School and at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.  He received a Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry in 1980.  He then did postdoctoral work at the Harvard Biological Laboratories.  He joined the faculty of the Department of Microbiology at Columbia University in 1982.  At Columbia his lab started to investigate the virulence determinants of Legionella pneumophila, an environmental organism that causes a severe and often lethal pneumonia called Legionnaires’ disease.  His lab has developed several genetic approaches for studying microbial pathogens.  Professor Shuman joined the University of Chicago in July 2010. His lab continues to focus on the cell biology, genomics and genetics of Legionella’s interactions with human and protist hosts.  His lab also studies resistance to environmental stresses in Coxiella burnetii.  This organism is related to Legionella and causes a flu-like illness called Q-fever.  Coxiella is remarkable for its resistance to desiccation.  The lab also studies signaling and transcriptional regulation related to antibiotic resistance and virulence in the opportunistic human pathogen, Acinetobacter baumannii.

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