Dr. Charu Kaushic is an Associate Professor in Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. She is also a member of Michael De Groote Institute of Infectious Disease Research and associate faculty in Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at McMaster. Her research interest is women’s reproductive health with a current focus on examining susceptibility and immune responses to sexually transmitted pathogens HIV-1 and HSV-2. One of the areas of particular interest is the effect of female sex hormones on immune responses in the female reproductive tract. Dr. Kaushic received her doctoral training in reproductive immunology at the National Institute of Immunology, India with Prof. G.P. Talwar and her post-doctoral training in mucosal immunology at Dartmouth Medical School, USA with Prof. Charles Wira. She is a recipient of a number of national and international awards, including a post-doctoral fellowship from The Rockefeller Foundation, a Scholarship award from Ontario HIV Treatment Network (OHTN), a New Investigator Award from Canadian Institutes of Health Research CIHR) and an Early Researcher’s Award from Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation. Her research has been funded by Canadian health research agencies including CANFAR, OHTN and CIHR. She has served on several NIH and CIHR grant review panels and is an ad-hoc reviewer for numerous well-recognized immunology, reproductive biology and infectious disease journals. She has close associations with American Society of Reproductive Immunology and currently serves as the Secretary in the Executive Council of the society. Dr. Kaushic will be involved in examining the immuno-endocrine aspects of endometriosis.