Dr. Susan Kaech is Professor and Director of the NOMIS Center for Immunobiology and Microbial Pathogenesis at the Salk Institute. She aims to understand how memory T cells are produced during infection and vaccination, how they function and why they can fail to induce long-term immunity, particularly during chronic disease or cancer. Her lab has been a leader in using genetic and molecular tools to identify the genes and signaling molecules involved in generating two specific types of memory T cells, CD4 and CD8, from precursor cells during both acute and chronic viral infections.