Shauna Kaplan earned a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Sciences: Biology-Chemistry with a minor in Psychology from Lawrence University (Appleton, WI) in 2003. She spent the next 4 years working at Abbott Laboratories/Hospira, Inc. in McPherson, KS, as a microbiologist and completed her Master of Public Health degree from the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita in 2007. She earned her Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences at Loyola University Chicago in the Microbiology and Immunology department, where she studied adenovirus evasion of cellular immune responses. She then did her postdoctoral research at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the department of Infectious Diseases, studying influenza and astrovirus. During her postdoc, she was an adjunct assistant professor in the Biology department at Christian Brothers University for the 2014-2015 academic year, where she taught anatomy and physiology lab and a virology course. She joined the Drake Biology department in 2016 and is responsible for teaching introductory biology (BIO 012) and the microbiology class and laboratory (BIO 103 and BIO 103L).
Dr. Kaplan’s current research interests are in understanding astrovirus cell entry, the immune response to infection, and how influenza A virus replication alters macrophage function. She is a member of the American Society for Virology (ASV) and the Association of College & University Biology Educators (ACUBE).
