Maria Gomes-Solecki, DVM, is a leading researcher in Lyme disease and a professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Biochemistry at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Trained as a veterinarian in Portugal, she moved to the United States to pursue specific training in molecular biology and infectious disease. For more than two decades, her research has focused on understanding how dysregulation of immune responses to tick-transmitted Borrelia burgdorferi mediate pathogen persistence, reservoir host tolerance, pathology and disease progression which led to development of vaccines and diagnostic assays for Lyme disease.