Research Focus Teams
Tuberculosis, Lung Disease, Antimicrobial resistance
Research Interests
Infection and Immunity, Tuberculosis, Host-directed therapy, Macrophage biology, Bacterial pathogenesis
Departments
Microbiology & Immunology
Bio
Dr. Jim Sun joined the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at UBC in January 2024, and is a core member of the Prepare for Pandemics through Advanced Research in Evolution (PrePARE) Research Cluster. Dr. Sun received his BSc (Biochemistry, 2006) and PhD (Experimental Medicine, 2012) from the University of British Columbia, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 2017, Dr. Sun was recruited to the University of Ottawa to start his own independent research group, where he successfully established a dynamic tuberculosis host-pathogen research program and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2022. His most significant research contributions have revealed key insights to how Mycobacterium tuberculosis evades our immune response, development of novel treatments for pathogenic infections, and the discovery of the tuberculosis necrotizing toxin. Dr. Sun's research has important implications for advancing host-directed therapies to treat tuberculosis. His honours include the American Society for Microbiology Infection and Immunity Exceptional Early-Career PI (2022), the Lung Health Foundation Young Investigator Award (2021), the Canadian Society for Immunology New Investigator Merit Award (2020), and the Pfizer Canada Research Award (2018 & 2020).