Dr. Michal Caspi Tal (“Mikki”) is an immunoengineer and Principal Scientist in the Department of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she leads the Tal Research Group. She also serves as Associate Scientific Director of MIT’s Center for Gynepathology Research.
Dr. Tal earned her PhD in Immunobiology from Yale University under the mentorship of Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, studying how factors such as aging influence immune responses to viral infections. She completed her postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Irving Weissman at Stanford University, where she later became an Instructor in the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and led the infectious disease research team. Her work focused on immune regulatory pathways that influence the clearance of infectious diseases, including Lyme disease.
A recipient of Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s 2018 Emerging Leader Award, Dr. Tal has built a research program focused on understanding why some individuals fully recover from infection while others develop chronic, debilitating illness. For a description of her project, click here. Her work spans Lyme disease, Long COVID, and other infection-associated chronic conditions, with a particular emphasis on how sex, hormones, and aging shape immune responses and disease outcomes.
At MIT, Dr. Tal leads the MAESTRO study, one of the largest clinical studies of its kind, which compares patients with chronic Lyme disease and Long COVID using comprehensive, multimodal profiling. Her team is developing objective biological measures of symptoms such as brain fog, inflammation, vascular dysfunction, barrier integrity, and metabolic changes to improve diagnosis, patient stratification, and treatment development. Complementing these clinical studies, her laboratory conducts mechanistic investigations in animal models to identify the factors that drive recovery versus persistent disease.
Dr. Tal’s research has been featured by NBC Boston and Fox 5 New York for her innovative work exploring novel approaches to Lyme disease prevention. Through the integration of clinical and preclinical research, she aims to transform subjective illness experiences into measurable biological insights that can accelerate the development of targeted, next-generation therapeutics for complex chronic diseases.