Meet the Hargarten Lab
Jessica C. Hargarten, PhD
Assistant Professor | Principal Investigator
Dr. Jessica C. Hargarten received her B.S. from the University of California, Davis and her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She did her postdoctoral training at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the NIH Clinical Center under the mentorship of Dr. Peter R. Williamson, MD/PhD in the Translational Mycology Section where she began to uncover the genetic and immunologic factors underlying human susceptibility to invasive fungal disease. Her work also identified the predominant pathway underlying a post-fungal infection inflammatory syndrome and a new treatment modality for cryptococcal- post-infectious inflammatory response syndrome in patients. After her training, she moved to Rutgers where she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology, Immunology, and Laboratory Medicine and member of the Center of Immunity and Inflammation. Dr. Hargarten's long-term research goal is to define and interrogate human genetic, immunologic, and lifestyle factors that skew immune responses towards severe disease following fungal infections in previously healthy populations in order to inform precision medicine approaches to care and treatment. Her lab utilizes relevant in vivo and in vitro models of disease and clinical samples to further determine the role of these genes (particularly MTOR pathway genes) in immunity and susceptibility to disease caused by the fungus Cryptococcus. Her research is currently supported by extramural funding from NIAID.
email: jessica.hargarten@rutgers.edu