Jacqueline Kimmey, Ph.D.

Jacqueline began her research career as an undergraduate at UCLA where she studied heme acquisition in Mycobacterium tuberculosis in the lab of Marcus Horwitz, MD. She completed her graduate studies at Washington University in St. Louis with Christina Stallings, PhD studying autophagy-independent functions of ATG5 in controlling neutrophil mediated susceptibility to M. tuberculosis. As a postdoc she worked with Victor Nizet, MD to explore how host responses dictate outcome of acute bacterial infections such as those caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, Group A Streptococcus (GAS), Group B Streptococcus (GBS), and Staphylococcus aureus. Jacqueline's training has been generously supported by various training and mentorship programs including UC LEADS, MARC, NSF GFRP, and UC PPFP. In 2019, Jacqueline was honored on the Forbes' 30 under 30 list (Science) and is a 2022 Pew Biomedical Scholar. 

Jacqueline started the lab at UC Santa Cruz in July 2019. While setting up the lab, she was attracted by the immense reserach potential of zebrafish models and immediately began efforts to establish the first zebrafish facility on campus. The facility was fully functional in 2020 despite some crazy hurdles due to the pandemic and the CZU wildfires. Jacqueline also started her journey into circadian biology at this time - prompted by a particularly enthusiastic and fortuitous conversation with Dr. Carrie Partch (Chem Biochem). The lab now focuses exclusively on circadian rhythms - how they influence immunity, and how microbes influence the circadian clock.

Jacqueline also has a passion for teaching and scientific communication. She designed METX100 (Introduction to Microbiology) and teaches it in a flipped format that allows time for lots of application based activities and active learning in class. At the graduate level, she also regularly teaches part of METX206A (Advanced Microbiology), METX210 (Bacterial Pathogenesis), and METX238 (Inflammation and Pathogenesis).