Steven Robert Blanke PhD

Steven R. Blanke, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, with appointments in the Department of Microbiology and the Institute for Genomic Biology. Dr. Blanke’s laboratory studies the fundamental mechanisms by which pathogenic bacteria establish infection and persist within humans to cause disease. Major themes of interest are mechanisms of persistent infection, intracellular pathogenesis, the modulation of the mammalian cell cycle by bacteria, and complex bacterial ecosystems associated with the disease. Dr. Blanke’s laboratory is currently investigating model pathogens of human and national interest including Helicobacter pylori, Bacillus anthracis, and Campylobacter jejuni.

Dr. Blanke received his B.S. in Biochemistry from Virginia Tech University and his Ph.D. (1989) at the University of Illinois in the Department of Biochemistry under Dr. Lowell P. Hager. As an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School in the laboratory of Dr. John Collier, Dr. Blanke began investigating fundamental mechanisms of infectious disease, with specific emphasis on the action of diphtheria and anthrax toxins. He received tenure in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Houston and moved his laboratory to the University of Illinois-Urbana in 2005.