معرفی
Dr. Hannah K. Frank is an Assistant Professor at Tulane University’s School of Science & Engineering. Her research focuses on the ecology and evolution of host-pathogen interactions in bats, integrating fieldwork, genomics, and immunology to understand how habitat disturbances impact immune systems. She leads the Frank Lab, which studies bat immunity, particularly B and T cell receptor diversity, using a OneHealth approach. Dr. Frank earned an AB summa cum laude from Harvard College in 2009, followed by a PhD in Biology from Stanford University (2017) and a postdoctoral fellowship in immunology at Stanford School of Medicine.
Her research interests include evolutionary ecology, molecular evolution, and disease ecology, with a focus on bats as keystone species. Recent work explores immunoglobulin diversity in Jamaican fruit bats and the implications of dual IGH loci in vesper bats. She has secured grants from NSF, NIH, and Research Corporation for projects on bat immune responses and rabies dynamics.
Dr. Frank advises PhD candidates including Mika O’Shea, Andrea Calderon Brito, and Juniper Rosen, while mentoring undergraduates like Phoebe Reuben, who won awards for fieldwork. Her lab collaborates with institutions like Colorado State University and Stanford, advancing understanding of bat immune systems’ roles in ecosystem health and disease spillover prevention.
