Nizet Lab People: Shauna McGillivray

Shauna McGillivray, Ph.D.
Postgraduate Researcher

Shauna McGillivray hails from Minnesota and received her undergraduate education at Concordia College in Moorhead where she majored in Biology, Chemistry and German. As an undergraduate, Shauna conducted research on pilin expression in Neisseria spp. in the laboratory of Ellen Aho.

Shauna is a graduate of UCSD Biomedical Sciences doctoral training program where she studied under the supervision of Pamela Mellon, director of the UCSD Center for Reproductive Science & Medicine. Shauna's PhD dissertation was entitled: "Regulation of FSH beta Gene Expression by Glucocorticoids and Activin".

Shauna's research examines the host pathogen interactions and the interplay of specific bacterial virulence factors with the innate immune system. She has studied the role of ClpXP protease in Bacillus anthracis resistance to cationic antimicrobial peptides and is pursuing other candidate anthrax irulence factor genes discovered in a novel screen conducted in the roundworm C. elegans. She has also studied novel roles of the inflammasome and Notch signaling in the host response to anthrax. Shauna's observations are being extended to other drug resistant pathogens including MRSA. Shauna's initial research was supported by the UCSD/SDSU IRACDA program, which involved significant undergraduate teaching at SDSU. She is now the recipient of a prestigious Biomedical Research Fellowship from the Hartwell Foundation.