Women in Science and Engineering at Yale (2020 Edition)

Paula Kavathas, Ph.D.

Professor, Yale School of Medicine – Department of Laboratory Medicine, the Department of Immunobiology and the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology

Vice Chair of Diversity, Department of Immunobiology

Institutional Leader, CIRTL Network 

Paula Kavathas’s research focuses on immunity and immunotherapy. She has examined the structure and function of the CD8 cell surface protein, important in how killer T cells recognize and destroy virally infected or tumor cells.  She has used transgenic methods to identify regulatory elements involved in the CD8 gene complex. More recently she is studying how tumor cells escape recognition and killing by the CD8 T cell and how another immune cell, the natural killer cell, can be mobilized to kill tumor cells in lung cancer. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles, and is a book author. With a passion for science literacy, she ran an outreach program in the New Haven Public Schools for 18 years (SEOP) and teaches a popular undergraduate course “Immunity and Contagion”. As Yale’s institutional leader for the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL), she promotes training for the next generation of science faculty. She has been an advocate for policies and culture that promote women in science serving as former Chair of the Yale Women Faculty Forum and on the executive board of the Status of Women in Medicine (SWIM).