Polly Matzinger - Ghost Lab at NIAID

Ghost Lab At NIAID

Polly Matzinger is now a section head at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Matzinger and her coworkers refer to the lab's name as the 'Ghost Lab' when listing their affiliation in papers. The nickname was given to the lab by her colleagues when Matzinger first arrived at the NIH because she spent the first nine months studying a new field (Chaos Theory) that she thought might apply to the immune system, and the lab sat empty. The formal name of her laboratory is the T-Cell Tolerance and Memory Section of the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Immunology. The ghost lab now hosts 3 post-doctoral researchers . From this knowledge pool, approximately 0-3 original research articles are published a year, including original research articles and theoretical pieces. A majority of the publications are her taken-author published works, theoretical in nature and published in very highly cited journals.