Darin Wiesner, PhD, postdoctoral student in the lab of Bruce Klein, MD, was recently awarded a Hartwell Foundation Fellowship in the amount of $100,000. This two-year award will allow him to study the early recognition events and intrinsic signals by the pulmonary epithelium that elicit alarmin/chemoattractant responses and subsequent allergic immune responses. His research aims are to elucidate the cell surface recognition elements and subsequent signaling pathways employed by epithelial cell subsets that are involved in allergy sensitization and recurrent airway hypersensitivity in response to fungi and components such as chitin. He will monitor how this perturbation impacts the allergic response (e.g., alarmin signal, type-2 response, airway disease, etc.) to fungal allergen in mice.