Ruth A. Franklin PhD

Dr. Ruth A. Franklin received her B.A. from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where she majored in Biology and minored in Sociology. She earned her Ph.D. in Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis from Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, where she studied in the laboratory of Dr. Ming Li at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Her thesis work characterized the lineage and function of tumor-associated macrophages in the development and progression of breast cancer.

Dr. Franklin then joined the laboratory of Dr. Ruslan Medzhitov at Yale School of Medicine as a postdoctoral fellow, where she continued to expand her interests in macrophage biology. Her work demonstrated that cell composition within tissues can be regulated by the reciprocal exchange of growth factors. Over the course of her research, Dr. Franklin also identified a number of secreted factors produced by macrophages in response to stress conditions. These molecules likely have important functions during both homeostasis and inflammation.