Sarah Stanley is an Associate Professor at UC Berkeley with appointments in the School of Public Health and in Immunology and Molecular Medicine within Molecular and Cell Biology. A founding member and Scientific Advisor of the Alliance for Global Health and Science, she is deeply committed to scientific capacity building in low- and middle-income countries and has mentored numerous students and scientists from around the world. Her research focuses on innate and adaptive immune responses to Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), a pathogen of tremendous global importance that kills more people annually than any other infectious agent and infects an estimated two billion people worldwide. Her lab seeks to understand why natural immunity fails to eliminate Mtb infection—despite the pathogen being a strong inducer of inflammation and robust T cell responses—and what types of immune responses have the potential to be truly protective. This work extends to the bacterial perspective as well, using genetics to identify virulence factors that allow Mtb to exploit, evade, and suppress host immunity. The ultimate goal is to leverage these insights for developing new vaccines and immune-modifying therapeutics. Sarah trained at UCSF, where she earned her PhD studying the molecular basis of Mtb pathogenesis with Jeff Cox, followed by postdoctoral work at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT using high-throughput screening to identify novel inhibitors of infection.