Dr. McInerney received the PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Michigan in 1989 and then went on to do a postdoctoral at Yale in the laboratory of the late Dr. Charles A. Janeway ,Jr. After receiving tenure Dr. McInerney became a Senior Iacocca Fellow at the Joslin Diabetes Center/ Harvard University for her sabbatical. Dr McInerney received a Career Development Award from the American Diabetes Association entitled " Autoantigen Recognition by CD8+ T Lymphocytes in Type 1 Diabetes". Dr. McInerney has focused on both autoimmunity and innate immunity in Type 1 Diabetes and inflammation and the role of macrophages in Type 2 Diabetes. Dr. McInerney has also focused her research on the role of Insulin Receptor in Type 1 Diabetes with the two recent publications in the Journal of Immunology and the journal, Biomolecules in 2021. Her research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, The American Diabetes Association, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, The Diabetes Action Research and Education Foundation, the Central Ohio Diabetes Association, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture/ United States Department of Agriculture, on "Dietary and Genetic Risk Factors in Obesity and Diabetes".