Bonnie Douglas’s interest in immunology first developed through an internship at the National Cancer Institute in 2011-2012, where she studied IL-13 expression and FOXO3 gene targets in mouse models of prostate cancer.

As an undergraduate at Washington College, where she majored in biology and minored in chemistry, Douglas continued to participate in immunological research through the Student Innovators Program at Children’s National Medical Center in 2014 and later through her undergraduate thesis on the ability of hemocytes of the soft-shell clam species Mya arenaria to recognize neoplastic cells of the transmissible cancer disseminated neoplasia as pathogenic.

She is currently interested in immune regulation at barrier sites, and would like to learn more about the effect of the microbiome on regulatory signaling and peripheral tolerance. In addition to immunology,