Pedro Saavedra holds a B.S. in Biology and M.S. in Molecular Pathology from the University of Brasília, Brazil. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2018 from the University of Ghent in Belgium, where he studied the impact of inflammasomes and cell death in the context of auto-inflammatory and infectious diseases with Dr. Mohamed Lamkanfi. He then pursued his postdoctoral training at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York under the mentorship of Dr. Justin S. A. Perry to tackle the role of the host microbiota in regulating apoptotic cell clearance.

The Saavedra lab opened in January 2024 in the Department of Biology, and investigates host-microbe interactions in health and disease through an immunology and cell biology lens. To this end, we focus on the following areas:

1) Understanding how the intestinal microbiota impacts host physiology in the context of homeostasis and a variety of diseases (auto-inflammatory, autoimmune, metabolic, malignant and infectious diseases). We seek to ultimately uncover novel microbiota-derived immunomodulatory metabolites.

2) Deciphering the remarkable biology of host-pathogen interactions with a special focus on how the host innate immune system machinery functions during microbial infections.