MMI Assistant Professor Thomas Hart Studies Tickborne Diseases With a Focus on Lyme Disease

Thomas M. Hart, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology and the Lyme and Tickborne Diseases Research and Education Institute. Hart is an infectious disease microbiologist who studies the molecular mechanisms by which Lyme disease bacteria infect humans and cause disease.

Born in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, Hart earned a PhD in Biology from the University of Albany, State University of New York (SUNY)  in conjunction with the New York State Department of Health, where he studied how Lyme disease bacteria avoid killing by the host’s innate immune system. He then did a postdoctoral fellowship in the labs of Erol Fikrig, MD, and Aaron Ring, MD, PhD, at the Yale University School of Medicine. There, he utilized and developed comprehensive yeast display libraries to systematically interrogate pathogen-host-vector interactions that facilitate the transmission of vector-borne pathogens. 

Hart has published 17 research articles and reviews in journals. Hart’s research using yeast display libraries has been most recently published in Cell, with a second research paper on the subject accepted to be published in Science Translational Medicine.