The Wallet Laboratory’s research interests are focused on mechanisms associated with altered innate immune functions, which lead to dysregulated adaptive immunity. Most recently, our research program has grown due to productive collaborations in pulmonary mucosal immunology. As such, our program has four major arms integrated through with a central philosophy. Specifically, our laboratory focuses on the contribution of epithelial cell biology and signaling to innate and adaptive immune homeostasis and dysfunction. We study the contribution of what I term ‘epithelial cell innate immune (dys)function’ to five major disease conditions: SARS-CoV-2 infection, burn and inhalation injury, periodontal disease (autoinflammation), type 1 diabetes (autoimmunity), and pancreatic cancer. While appearing to be a diverse research program, we have found that many of the mechanisms and systems in play are surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly) similar allowing for rapid translation of our findings. Importantly, previous investigations into the role of epithelial cells in immunobiology have been hindered by a lack of robust primary cell culture techniques, which our laboratory has been able to overcome using both animal and human tissues. Thus, using our novel and unique tools we are able to evaluate our findings in the human conditions, again making translation of our findings that much more feasible.