Dr Tara Strutt

Dr Tara Strutt

Immunity and Pathogenesis Division, Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

Dr. Tara M. Strutt is an Assistant Professor within the Immunity and Pathogenesis Division of the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences in the College of Medicine at the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, FL, USA. She is an affiliate member of the UCF NanoScience Technology Center. She earned her Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada studying naïve CD4 T cell activation. Her postdoctoral studies at the Trudeau Institute in NY explored the protective functions of CD4 T memory cells during recall responses towards respiratory viral infection with influenza A virus. She joined the Faculty at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in MA as an Instructor in 2010 and transitioned to an Assistant Professor prior to joining UCF in 2015.

Dr. Strutt's research program studies how memory CD4+ T cells, such as those induced by vaccination, function to regulate inflammatory responses and mediate protection. She is leveraging this knowledge in pre-clinical models to improve the outcomes of infection in expectant mothers, an at-risk group for severe influenza infection, with the use of universally protective vaccines. Her research program is also developing a novel therapeutic intervention that has the potential to temper overzealous inflammatory responses in the lung during infection with a broad range of pathogens.

Updated 19 September 2023