March 2, 2026
Please join us in congratulating Marlies Meisel, PhD, on her promotion to associate professor with tenure, effective March 1, 2026!
A cellular immunologist with expertise in nutritional science and host-microbe interactions, Dr. Meisel is recognized for her research accomplishments, leadership in microbiota-modulated systemic immunity, and contributions to the Department of Immunology and scientific community.
Her research program integrates cutting-edge technologies, systems immunology, and innovative approaches to understand how the microbiota shapes systemic immune responses and the development of complex diseases such as autoimmunity and cancer.
Dr. Meisel received her undergraduate degree in nutritional sciences from the University of Vienna, Austria and her PhD in the Molecular Biology and Oncology graduate program at the Medical University of Innsbruck, where she studied Th17 cell-mediated autoimmunity in Dr. Gottfried Baier’s lab. As a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Bana Jabri’s lab at the University of Chicago, supported by the Austrian FWF Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship and the American Crohn's and Colitis Research Award, she investigated the interplay between gut bacteria and the immune system, making key discoveries about how inflammatory signals from microbes influence blood cancer development.
Since joining the University of Pittsburgh in October 2018 as an assistant professor in the Department of Immunology, Dr. Meisel has established an exceptionally well-funded and highly productive research program with multiple NIH R01 and R21 awards, the prestigious Melanoma Foundation Young Investigator Award, and numerous other grants. She has 38 published papers in top-tier journals, including two senior-author publications in Cell.
Her research program at Pitt focuses on discovering mechanisms through which the microbiota impacts systemic immunity to modulate complex diseases. Her work identified the liver microbiome as a critical driver of autoimmune hepatitis development in genetically susceptible hosts. She discovered that Lactobacillus reuteri gut bacteria translocate to tumors where they enhance the effects of immunotherapy drugs by secreting indole-3-aldehyde, a compound that stimulates cancer-killing CD8 T cells. More recently, her team uncovered a previously unrecognized mechanism by which exercise enhances anti-tumor immunity and immunotherapy effectiveness by reshaping the gut microbiome. Dr. Meisel has developed innovative methodologies, including culturomics to study gut-distal microbiomes, enabling new functional investigations of host-microbe interactions at systemic sites.
Dr. Meisel is regularly invited to give talks at prestigious institutions and conferences, including keynote presentations, and has received several major recognitions for her work, including the ICIS-Regeneron New Investigator Award for Excellence in Cytokine & Interferon Research and the ASciNA Award for outstanding Junior Principal Investigators. She is also a dedicated mentor and educator who has built a large interdisciplinary group of trainees.