EcoHealth Alliance is a US-based non-governmental organization with a stated mission of protecting people, animals, and the environment from emerging infectious diseases. The nonprofit is focused on research that aims to prevent pandemics and promote conservation in hotspot regions worldwide.
Pardis Christine Sabeti is an Iranian American computational biologist, medical geneticist, and evolutionary geneticist. She developed a bioinformatic statistical method which identifies sections of the genome that have been subject to natural selection and an algorithm which explains the effects of genetics on the evolution of disease.
June Dalziel Almeida was a Scottish virologist, a pioneer in virus imaging, identification, and diagnosis. Her skills in electron microscopy earned her an international reputation.
Akiko Iwasaki is a Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University. She is also a principal investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her research interests include innate immunity, autophagy, inflammasomes, sexually transmitted infections, herpes simplex virus, human papillomavirus, respiratory virus infections, influenza infection, T cell immunity, commensal bacteria, COVID-19 and Long COVID.
Norman Post Salzman was an American virologist. He spent much of his career as a scientist at the United States National Institutes of Health, where he rose to become the chief of the Laboratory on the Biology of Viruses; after retiring from the NIH in 1986, he worked at Georgetown University and later at the Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center. Salzman died of pancreatic cancer in 1997 at age 71.
Blossom Damania is a virologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is known for her work on oncogenic viruses that cause human cancer. Damania has also been serving as vice dean for research at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicine since 2016.
Shahid Jameel is an Indian virologist and academic. Dr. Jameel is the Sultan Qaboos bin Said Fellow at Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and Research Fellow, Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. He serves as the Principal Investigator for the Centre's project on Public Health, Science and Technology in Muslim societies. Previously he was the director of the Trivedi School of Biosciences since its inception in the year 2020 at Ashoka University. He was formerly head of the scientific advisory group to the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortia (INSACOG) established in December 2020, and the chief executive officer of Wellcome Trust DBT India Alliance. Known for his research in hepatitis E virus, Jameel is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies viz. National Academy of Sciences, India, Indian Academy of Sciences, and Indian National Science Academy. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Medical Sciences in 2000.
Sean Whelan is a British-American virologist. He is known for identifying the cellular protein used as a receptor by Ebola virus, for defining the entry pathway that rabies virus uses to enter neurons, and for identifying the ribosome as a possible target for antiviral drugs. In July 2019, he was announced as the new Chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri. In February 2020, Whelan was recognized as the LGBTQ+ Scientist of the Year 2020 by the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals.
Karla Kirkegaard is the Violetta L. Horton Research Professor of genetics at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She was the chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology from 2006 to 2010. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on virology.
Brian R. Murphy is an American virologist and former co-chief of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
Yorgo E. Modis is Professor in Virology and Immunology, and a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge. He is head of The Modis Lab in the Molecular Immunity Unit at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He studies cellular mechanisms of viral gene sensing and silencing. His group employs a diverse set of complementary biophysical approaches including cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM), X-ray crystallography, solution biophysics, fluorescence microscopy and cell biological approaches to understand the cellular mechanisms of viral gene sensing and silencing in molecular-level detail.
Christian Heinrich Maria Drosten is a German virologist whose research focus is on novel viruses (emergent viruses). During the COVID-19 pandemic, Drosten came to national prominence as an expert on the implications and actions required to combat the illness in Germany.
Emmie de Wit is a Dutch-American virologist. She is chief of the molecular pathogenesis unit at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories. Her research combines pathogenesis studies with detailed molecular analyses to identify molecular determinants of severe respiratory tract disease within the virus and the host.
Kizzmekia "Kizzy" Shanta Corbett is an American viral immunologist. She is an Assistant Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Shutzer Assistant Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute since June 2021.
Sara R. Cherry is an American microbiologist who is John W. Eckman Professor of Medical Science and Professor of Microbiology in Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research involves genetic and mechanistic studies of virus–host interactions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cherry looked to identify novel therapeutic strategies.
Ya-Chi Ho is a Taiwanese infectious disease researcher and Associate Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and Medicine at Yale University. Her research centers on the interaction between HIV and the host's immune system with the ultimate goal of curing HIV/AIDS.
Jason S. McLellan is a structural biologist, professor in the Department of Molecular Biosciences and Robert A. Welch Chair in Chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin who specializes in understanding the structure and function of viral proteins, including those of coronaviruses. His research focuses on applying structural information to the rational design of vaccines and other therapies for viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). McLellan and his team collaborated with researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Vaccine Research Center to design a stabilized version of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which biotechnology company Moderna used as the basis for the vaccine mRNA-1273, the first COVID-19 vaccine candidate to enter phase I clinical trials in the U.S. At least three other vaccines use this modified spike protein: those from Pfizer and BioNTech; Johnson & Johnson and Janssen Pharmaceuticals; and Novavax.
Marisela Morales is a Mexican neuroscientist specializing in the neurobiology of drug addiction. She is a senior investigator at the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Anne Moscona is an American virologist and pediatrician. She is best known for identifying cell entry mechanisms for enveloped respiratory viruses, elucidating general infection mechanisms that apply to parainfluenza virus, Nipah virus, measles virus, and other viruses, and for applying this knowledge to identify antiviral strategies to prevent infection by viruses including SARS-CoV-2. She is frequently consulted as a medical expert during viral outbreaks, including epidemic and pandemic influenza. Since 2016, she has served as the Sherie L. Morrison Professor Microbiology & Immunology, Professor of Pediatrics, and Professor of Physiology & Cellular Biophysics at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, where she directs the Center for Host Pathogen Interaction. In 2022, Moscona was elected as president of the American Society for Virology, the nation's leading virology research organization, and will lead the organization starting in July 2023. For the last two years she has served the American Society for Virology as Councilor for Medical Virology.
Ulrike Protzer is a German virologist who has been a professor at the Chair of Virology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) since 2007. Her primary field of study is virus-host interactions of the hepatitis B virus and her work is focused on developing new therapeutic approaches for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B infection and related secondary diseases. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the novel virus SARS-CoV-2 has also been one of her research areas, and she has been a prominent voice in German media on this topic.
