Dr. Naik focuses on the fundamentally important interactions between the immune system, microbes, and adult skin tissue stem cells, and the consequences of such interactions for health and disease.  She studies how stem cells in epithelial tissues such as the skin sense and cope with inflammatory stress.  Her goal is to understand how inflammatory signals (either host-generated or microbial) provide adult stem cells with rapid, sensitive, and context-specific information, and how this process can go awry, potentially predisposing stem cells to diseases such as cancer. She hopes that her findings will facilitate the development of novel therapies.