Diana Bautista, Ph.D.

Dr. Diana Bautista is an HHMI investigator, Professor, and Head of the Cell Biology, Development & Physiology Division in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and is a member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. She received a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Oregon, her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Stanford University with Dr. Rich Lewis and was a postdoctoral fellow in Physiology at the University of California, San Francisco with Dr. David Julius. She joined the faculty at UC Berkeley in 2008. Dr. Bautista’s lab aims to decipher the neuroimmune interactions driving chronic itch, pain, and airway inflammation. Specifically, Bautista and her team are investigating the molecular and cellular mechanisms by which sensory neuron, airway epithelial cell, and immune cell interactions become dysregulated following injury, atopic disease, and infection. Their work involves studying clinically relevant disease models of skin and airway inflammation, including human and mouse models of airway inflammation and respiratory stress caused by inflammatory mediators and viral infection. The team’s use of multiple models and multiple species will allow them to pursue the goal of defining a mechanistic framework for neuroimmune crosstalk in the development of inflammatory disease states. Her lab has been funded by the NIH since 2009 and her research has been recognized by numerous awards, including the 2014 Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award, a 2019 NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award, and she was selected as a 2021Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. For her outreach and mentoring, she was awarded the 2012 Prytanean Faculty Award for outstanding research, teaching & outreach, the 2023 Department of Molecular & Cell Biology Faculty award for leadership in DEIB, and a 2024 UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly award for mentoring.