Caroline Leeth named assistant professor of animal and poultry sciences
Caroline Leeth has been named assistant professor of animal and poultry sciences in Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
She is one of 19 new faculty members that were recently hired in the college. New positions were identified to bring new talent to its focus areas, including food and health, infectious disease, biodesign and processing, and agricultural profitability and environmental sustainability. The new faculty members are distributed across teaching, research, and Extension.
Leeth received her Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Maine in 2011, and her Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine degree from Virginia Tech in 2001.
Her research focuses on adaptive immune response in health and disease, and specifically the role of B lymphocyte maturation in two autoimmune diseases: type 1 diabetes and systemic lupus erythematosus.
She is researching the requirement for class switch recombination and somatic hypermutation using mouse models. In addition, she is working on the basic biology of equine immune cells including Toll-like receptor expression and the physiology of T regulatory cells.
Prior to coming to Virginia Tech, Leeth served as a post-doctoral associate, and associate research scientist and veterinarian, at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine.
As an active participant in the community at the Jackson Laboratory — a repository which houses the largest variety of specialty mouse strains available from any single organization — she reviewed mouse strains submitted from researchers worldwide for acceptance into the Jackson lab.
Leeth is a recipient of the American Association of Immunologists Abstract Trainee Award, and a member of the American Association of Immunologists, the American Veterinary Association, and the Genetic Resource Committee at the Jackson Laboratory.
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