Franklin Alan Sher obtained his doctorate from the University of California, San Diego, in the United States and completed his postdoctoral training in the Division of Parasitology of the National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill, London, England. In 1980, after several years as a research associate and later assistant professor in the Department of Pathology at Harvard Medical School, he joined the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the United States as section chief in the Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases (LPD). Sher became chief of the LPD in 2003 and was promoted to NIH Distinguished Investigator in 2011. In June 2022, he ended his laboratory research program to focus primarily on mentoring activities.