Infection International

Photo: Keyi Liu

As an undergraduate at St. Andrews University in Scotland, David Russell fell in love with infection. "It's just something that caught my imagination," says Russell, now a professor and chair of microbiology and immunology at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. "Infection is the ultimate in intimate interactions between two organisms. And it's this interplay between organisms that really fascinates me."

That fascination carried Russell from his native Scotland to England, Germany, and the United States, in pursuit of an understanding of how various pathogens enter and establish a relationship with host cells. Using a combination of biochemistry, cell biology, genetics, and microscopy, Russell is investigating how Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bug that causes tuberculosis, takes up residence inside macrophages, the very immune cells designed to kill marauding microbes. And he's exploring how the bacterium exploits its environment to regulate its metabolism, reproduction, and transmission.

Russell began his lifelong ...