Sarah E. Cobey PhD

Sarah Cobey is an associate professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution, the Program in Biophysics, and the Committee on Microbiology at the University of Chicago. Sarah Cobey's group investigates the coevolution of pathogens and hosts' adaptive immunity, and we use computational and mathematical tools to test hypotheses and to advance theory. Sarah Cobey's early work focused on the evolutionary consequences of immune-mediated competition between different pathogen strains, including influenza, pneumococcus, and human papillomavirus. More recently, Sarah Cobey's focus has expanded to include the dynamics of the host immune response: how chance, infection history, vaccination, age, and other factors shape the evolution of antibody repertoires over time. This research involves linking immunology, epidemiology, and virology with ecological and evolutionary principles, and Cobey hopes it can lead us to better vaccination strategies.

Sarah Cobey graduated from Princeton University in 2002, obtained Sarah Cobey Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolution from the University of Michigan in 2009, and completed an NIH Ruth Kirschstein fellowship at the Harvard School of Public Health in 2013. At the University of Chicago, Sarah has been awarded an NIH New Innovator Award, a McDonnell Foundation Complex Systems Scholar Award, and a Neubauer Faculty Development Fellowship.