Sharon Stranford received her PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from Hahnemann University (now Drexel) in Philadelphia, where she studied autoimmunity with Elizabeth Blankenhorn. After graduating, she spent 3 years as a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University in England, exploring transplantation immunology, followed by 3 years at the University of California, San Francisco, working on HIV/AIDS with Dr. Jay Levy. In 2001 she was hired as a Clare Booth Luce Assistant Professor at Mount Holyoke College, a small liberal arts college for women in South Hadley, MA, where she is currently an Associate Professor serving the Department of Biological Sciences and the Program in Biochemistry. Sharon’s research, which is funded by the NIH and NSF, utilizes a murine model of AIDS to study early genetic and immunologic indicators of susceptibility to acquired immune deficiency.