October 6, 2025
Please join us in congratulating Amanda Poholek, PhD, on her promotion to Associate Professor with tenure.
Dr. Poholek is recognized for her commitment, expertise, and leadership within the Department of Immunology and her contributions to the University of Pittsburgh and the broader scientific community.
Her research program integrates cutting-edge technologies, systems immunology, and innovative approaches to understanding how tissue-specific environmental factors alter transcriptomes and epigenomes of T cells that control their differentiation in the context of diseases such as Th2 differentiation in allergic asthma and T cell exhaustion in tumors.
After receiving her undergraduate degree in biology from Fordham University, Dr. Poholek earned her PhD in cell biology from Yale University in Dr. Joe Craft’s lab. As a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. John O’Shea’s lab at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), she used next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics approaches to explore the epigenetic landscape and contributions of the protein Blimp-1 to Th2 biology, which laid the groundwork for her independent research program.
Dr. Poholek joined the University of Pittsburgh in 2015 as a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics. In 2017, she was promoted to Assistant Professor in the tenure stream in the Division of Pediatric Rheumatology with a secondary appointment in immunology before moving her primary appointment to the Department of Immunology in 2024.
Dr. Poholek’s research is funded by prestigious grants including two NIH R01s, several NIH R21s, and support from foundations such as the American Lung Association.
An active member of the scientific community, Dr. Poholek has published more than 45 papers, is regularly invited to give talks at prestigious institutions and conferences, has collaborated on multi-institutional research projects, and is a co-investigator in large NIH-funded studies. As Director of the Health Sciences Sequencing Core at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, she has transformed the core into a premier facility supporting interdisciplinary research across the health sciences.
Dr. Poholek is a dedicated mentor and educator who has successfully guided graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and undergraduates, many of whom have gone on to achieve accolades and positions at leading institutions.