H Steven Seifert (Hank) is the John Edward Porter Professor of Biomedical Science and Microbiology-Immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a recipient of three NIH MERIT Awards. He was raised in Philadelphia, PA, received a B.S in Chemistry from Beloit College in 1977, was an Examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office 1977-1979, received a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from The Pennsylvania State University in 1984, and did his postdoctoral training as a Damon Runyon Walter Winchell Fellow with Dr. Magdalene So at The Research Institute of Scripps Clinic from 1984-1988. He has been on the faculty of Northwestern University since 1988. His research involves many aspects of Neisseria gonorrhoeae, with a concentration on the Type IV pilus, including mechanisms of pilin antigenic variation and pilus assembly and function. His group has also created many of the genetic tools used in this bacterium.