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Christine Biron is the chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Brown University in Providence, and she focuses her research program on the mechanisms of the innate immune system \\u2013 the body\\u2019s system of non-specific munitions for fighting off pathogens.\\xa0 Dr. Biron is also a newly elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

When a pathogen gets on or in your body, your innate immune system is on the front lines, working against the pathogen is a non-specific manner.\\xa0 In research, the innate immune system got short shrift for a long time, and only in the last 10 or 20 years has the field picked up momentum.\\xa0 Dr. Biron says back when she was in graduate school \\u201cthe innate immune system wasn\\u2019t thought to be very cool\\u201d, but she says the field is fast-moving today, in part because of some major discoveries involving Type-1 interferons, natural killer cells, and an increased appreciation of a wider range of antigen processing cells that link the innate and adaptive immune responses.

In this interview, I talked with Dr. Biron about our increasing awareness of the innate immune system, why it\\u2019s important to bring microbiologists and immunologists together under one big tent, and why it\\u2019s best that a battle between a virus and a host ends not in victory for one and defeat for the other, but in d\\xe9tente.