Isaac Chiu is Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Immunology. Dr. Chiu’s central research focus is neuro-immune interactions in pain and host defense. He has found that nociceptor neurons directly detect bacterial pathogens and their secreted toxins to produce pain. These neurons signal to innate immune and epithelial cells in the skin and gut to mediate barrier immune responses. Defining neuroimmune signaling could lead to new treatments for pain and infection. Dr. Chiu did his PhD work in Immunology at Harvard Medical School and his postdoctoral training in the neurobiology of pain at Boston Children’s Hospital. He started his independent faculty position at Harvard medical school in 2014. His lab uses interdisciplinary approaches from neurobiology, microbiology and immunology to uncover interactions between microbes and the nervous system. Dr. Chiu has received the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigators Award, and Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative Ben Barres Award.