Rachel M. Kratofil, PhD

Dr. Rachel M. Kratofil is a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Shruti Naik’s lab at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. As an international award-winning scientist, she investigates how epithelial stem and progenitor cells sense microbes during injury. Dr. Kratofil received her B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of Victoria, Canada, and became fascinated with the microscopic world and the ways tissues respond to infection and injury. She completed her PhD in Immunology at the University of Calgary under Dr. Paul Kubes, discovering a vascular repair–mediated paradigm in which immune cells curb infections through mechanisms that also regulate hunger and satiety. Her doctoral work earned the Canadian Governor General’s Gold Medal in 2023.