Janelle Ayres wants to understand a deceptively simple question: upon infection, what dictates if an individual will remain healthy and survive, or become sick and die? Traditionally scientists have assumed that surviving infections is largely dependent on pathogen eradication. Ayres aims to shift the paradigm in infectious disease research from an exclusive focus on pathogen eradication to a broader understanding of how a host can adapt to infections to maintain health and promote survival with cooperative defense mechanisms that protect from disease, without compromising pathogen fitness. By doing so, this research aims to provide a solution for the global crisis of antibiotic resistance.