Dr. Rachel Gottschalk

Biography

Rachel Gottschalk is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh, with a post-doctoral fellowship from the Laboratory of Systems Biology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health. She completed her PhD in Immunology at Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences in 2012 and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Emory University, obtained in 2005. Her research interests focus on understanding the extracellular cues linked to gene expression, tackling fundamental challenges in biology with an emphasis on innate immune signal integration. Her laboratory employs quantitative approaches to address significant projects, including computational modeling of signaling-to-transcription in macrophages and interrogating tissue-specific macrophage signaling. She also dissects the molecular determinants that influence monocyte-macrophage inflammatory functions. By utilizing experimental methods combined with data-driven mechanistic modeling, she examines transcription factor activity and phosphorylation, as well as transcriptomic data to explore the signaling mechanisms shaping macrophage functions in response to stimuli. Her efforts aim to yield insights into the dysregulation of signaling pathways in inflammation, thereby informing therapeutic strategies.

Research Interests