Melissa D. Halpern earned her B.Sc. and Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Arizona. After post-doctoral training in autoimmune disease at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, she returned to Tucson to study necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC)—the most common GI emergency of premature infants—in the laboratory of Bohuslav Dvorak, Ph.D. In 2004, Dr. Halpern became a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008.