Katherine Y. King MD PhD is Associate Professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Baylor College of Medicine, where she is part of the faculty for the Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine Center and serves as a co-director of the BCM Medical Scientist Training Program and Associate Vice-Chair for Research for the Department of Pediatrics. Dr. King received her BA in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard University and her MD and PhD degrees from Washington University in St. Louis. A board-certified pediatrician within the Infectious Disease Division, Dr. King’s research focuses on the molecular mechanisms by which inflammation affects blood and immune cell production by hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow. Dr. King pioneered the discovery that the inflammatory cytokine interferon gamma, released during intracellular infections, activates hematopoietic stem cell division and pushes these cells to differentiate. The concept that hematopoietic stem cells are subject to both push and pull forces forms a common thread through current work to define environmental drivers of stem cell clonal competition and selection, the impact of the microbiome on hematopoiesis, and molecular mechanisms by which hematopoietic stem cells are epigenetically reprogrammed to affect downstream immunity. Dr. King’s work has translational implications in the fields of bone marrow failure syndromes, infectious diseases, clonal hematopoiesis, aging, and cancer development. Dr. King has been the recipient of the NHLBI R35 Emerging Investigator Award and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). In 2006, she cofounded Doctors for Change, a health care advocacy non-profit in Houston.