Janet Gilsdorf

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Janet Gilsdorf is an American pediatric infectious diseases doctor, scientist, and writer at the University of Michigan. Her work focuses on Haemophilus influenzae, a bacterium that can cause ear infections and meningitis in children. She led the University of Michigan’s Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases from 1989 to 2012 and co-led the Center for Molecular and Clinical Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases from 2000 to 2015.

She studied at North Dakota State University and the University of North Dakota School of Medicine, earned her medical degree from the University of Nebraska, and trained in pediatrics in Texas and California. She completed a pediatric infectious diseases fellowship at the University of Minnesota. Her research covers how H. influenzae spreads, what genes help some strains cause disease, and how the bacteria stick to cells with surface structures called pili. In Alaska, she found a high rate of meningitis in Native children, which helped drive vaccine trials there. In Fresno, she and Dan Granoff showed that healthy day-care children can carry the bacteria and that the antibiotic rifampin can reduce carriage, leading to guidelines for treating contacts. She described the genetic diversity of colonizing strains and the differences between disease-causing and carriage strains, suggesting factors that drive illness. She also helped develop a molecular method to identify H. influenzae strains using a capsule gene, a method now used by the CDC.

Gilsdorf lives in Ann Arbor with her husband Jim and has two adult sons. In addition to science, she writes two novels, a memoir, a non-fiction book, and several medically themed essays. Her memoir Inside/Outside: A Physician’s Journey with Breast Cancer details her experience with cancer.