Speakers

Michal Caspi Tal (Mikki), is an immunoengineer, and a principal scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Tal leads the Tal Research Group within the department of Biological Engineering and also serves as the associate scientific director of the Center for Gynepathology Research at MIT. From tick-borne disease to COVID, there are many similarities across the infection-associated chronic illnesses and important sex differences in the immune response to infection which could impact risk for developing chronic illness. Michal is combining preclinical and clinical investigation to map the trajectory of the immune response to infection and to examine how sex and age differences impact these trajectories. Dr. Tal is running the largest clinical study at MIT, MAESTRO, on chronic Lyme and Long COVID and complimenting that with the use of the mouse model of Lyme disease to deeply investigate sex and age differences in the immune response to infection. Her research is focused on developing predictive diagnostics, to distinguish those at risk of developing infection-associated chronic illness.