In the Office with Igor Brodsky, PhD

Robert R. Marshak Professor, University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine

Infectious diseases remain the leading cause of death worldwide. In his Philadelphia-based lab, Igor Brodsky is on a mission to understand how the body recognizes and responds to invading organisms that cause several diseases.

With Penn Vet since 2011, Brodsky chairs the Department of Pathobiology and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Microbiology at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. He’s also part of collaborative research hubs like the Penn Center for Genome Integrity and the Institute for Immunology and Immune Health.

“My lab focuses on how the innate immune system—our first line of defense against disease—detects and responds to bacterial threats,” he said. “We’re especially interested in how threatening bacteria evade detection.”

For example, sepsis: “With sepsis, we’re investigating how certain bacteria trigger an exaggerated immune response. There’s a detection system inside our cells designed to protect us, but when it’s overactivated, it can lead to organ failure or even death. Sepsis is hard to treat because, by the time symptoms show up, it’s often too late. If we can understand those early signals, we might be able to intervene before damage is done.”

Some of this work is a family affair: Brodsky collaborates with his wife, Sunny Shin, PhD, a professor in the Department of Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine. And day-to-day, he shares his office with another close loved one: Jules, the family’s dog.

1. Family Photos
   When our child, Maya, turned one, my mother-in-law strongly encouraged a family photo session with me, Sunny, and our child, Maya, who dressed in both Western and traditional Korean outfits. Maya’s now a middle schooler and refuses to wear dresses entirely. These are still some of my favorite photos, but I do need to get some more recent pictures.
2. Painted Stone
   One of the nice things about getting a PhD and running a lab is collecting so many gifts along the way. They become reminders of different people and times in my life. This painted stone was a parting gift from one of my PhD students. She made one for everyone in the lab, each with a different design. Mine shows a macrophage—a type of immune cell—being injected with a bacterial toxin. It’s a beautiful, thoughtful reminder of our work together.
3. Coffee Versus Tea
   The hand-painted coffee mug was also a student gift. It’s from Morocco. I go back and forth with drinking coffee. There have been periods when I drink a lot of coffee, which affects my sleep. After one of these intense coffee drinking times, I decided to switch to tea and acquired this setup. I’m back to drinking coffee sometimes, but most days, I come in, boil water in the kettle, and make a pot of loose-leaf tea.
4. The Journal of Experimental Medicine Cover
   This is a framed cover from a journal that published one of the lab’s papers. The image shows bacteria inside a macrophage, which reflects the core of our research. It’s an artist rendering of a real image we submitted before AI art was common. It’s both meaningful and a little nostalgic.
5. A “really good boy”
   Jules is a rescue from Texas. We adopted him in 2023 at about 11 months old. He’s a sweetheart, a really good boy. We did the doggy DNA testing and learned he’s half Belgian Malinois; most of the other half is American bully with a bit of a pitbull and Dutch Shepherd. He comes in with me most days and even has a best friend down the hall — [associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Science] Montserrat Anguera often brings her white Samoyed. They love to see each other and frequently play in the courtyard.