Alison Eastman, PhD

Dr. Eastman did her undergraduate degrees in Microbiology and Neurobiology at the University of Washington while participating in research on highly-pathogenic influenza infections and then acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome. She worked as a technician on microglial involvement in Alzheimer's pathogenesis at the UW, then moved to Michigan to do her PhD in Immunology under Dr. Michal Olszewski studying epigenetic control of dendritic cell polarization during pulmonary Cryptococcus neoformans infection. She transitioned to women's reproductive health for her postdoctoral training in 2016, first at the University of Michigan studying the interaction of levonorgestrel and the hormonal and copper intrauterine devices with reproductive tract immunology and the development of pelvic inflammatory disease. She has been at Vanderbilt since 2018 modeling bacterial chorioamnionitis in an organ-on-chip model, first with Dr. David Aronoff in Infectious Disease as a postdoctoral fellow, and then in Obstetrics and Gynecology as research faculty.