Dr. Carla Rothlin Joins University of Minnesota to Lead the Center for Immunology into a New Era
When Dr. Carla Rothlin was a child in Buenos Aires, her parents gave her a book about Lucy, the early hominid discovered in Africa. "I thought I was going to be a paleontologist," she recalls. Instead, she grew up to study something just as fundamental: how the body protects itself, and how it heals.
Today, Dr. Rothlin is the new director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Immunology (CFI), arriving after 16 years at Yale.
When you catch a cold or cut your finger, your immune system goes to work. But how does your body know how hard to fight, and when to stop? The Rothlin-Ghosh Lab, co-directed by Dr. Rothlin and her partner Dr. Sourav Ghosh, studies exactly that. "We study the brakes of the immune response, how you make sure you respond, but you don't go too fast," she explains.
Those brakes matter more than most people realize. When the immune system responds too strongly, we can become dangerously ill. When it never stops responding, we can develop chronic inflammation or autoimmune disease. The Rothlin-Ghosh Lab has discovered proteins that help the body keep that balance.
Their team also studies a related question: once the fight is over, how does the body put itself back together? One of the lab's projects involves the spiny mouse, a small rodent from Africa and the Middle East. When a predator grabs it, the spiny mouse can shed its own skin to escape, leaving behind a raw wound, and then grow the skin back completely, without scarring. The team is studying how it manages that, hoping to learn something that could one day help humans heal the same way.
Her path to this work was not direct. She studied biochemistry and pharmacy at the University of Buenos Aires, then earned a PhD in neuropharmacology, investigating how the brain regulates hearing. "Everything that we respond to needs to be tightly regulated," she says, the same principle that guided her shift into immunology during her postdoc at the Salk Institute in San Diego.
That shift began as a collaboration with Dr. Ghosh, whom she met when they were both postdocs. Together they made discoveries that launched both their careers. Dr. Ghosh also joined the University of Minnesota faculty from Yale. "We came together," Dr. Rothlin emphasizes. "We've done it together."
What drew her to Minnesota was the science and the people. "We value the science here," she says. "It's a very special place for immunology." She follows former directors Matt Mescher and Mark Jenkins, whose legacies she is quick to acknowledge, and praises her new colleagues: "We have really wonderful scientists in many areas. They're really stellar."
That same team-first approach shapes her vision for CFI. Asked about her mentorship philosophy, she answers, "The only difference is I just have more experience. But we are on this together."
Dr. Rothlin arrives at CFI in a strong year. She and colleague Dr. Dave Masopust both received awards at this year's American Association of Immunologists annual meeting, a notable recognition for a single center. Dr. Rothlin also recently became president-elect of the International Union of Immunology Societies.
Her goal for the next decade is straightforward: to make CFI "an incredible home for people to become the best scientists they can be."