VIDD Staff Scientists & Physicians

Pre-clinical evaluation of vaccine candidates and adjuvants in animal models. Specifically, monitor the activation, survival and maturation of B cells that produce protective antibodies against HIV-1. Designing and characterizing HIV-1 immunogens.

Research interests include early innate immune responses to HIV vaccines on subsequent adaptive immune responses and systems biology analyses of how immune responses are shaped.

Research interests include sexual risk taking, victimization and alcohol/drug abuse among African-American women, HIV prevention for African American and African-born populations and health disparities.

Clinical trial data management, Logistics, operations and study facilitation, Scientific communications, Host-pathogen interactions High-dimensional data analysis.

Research interests include understanding mucosal immune responses to viral infections and vaccines, in particular, the contribution of passively administered and vaccine elicited antibodies to protection against HIV-1 transmission at the cervicovaginal mucosa.

Research interests include targeting latent viral genomes for mutagenesis and disruption of viral pathogenesis and infection using engineered homing endonucleases.

Mathematical modeling of virus and immune system dynamics. Population/within-host dynamics approach to quantify HIV-1 infection and treatment efficacy (ordinary differential equations, nonlinear mixed effects models).

Characterization of immunological “signature” associated with development of cross-neutralizing antibody responses in HIV-infected individuals.

Immune profiling of cancer immunotherapy clinical trial subjects to further the understanding of therapy-driven patient immune responses in order to develop more effective cancer treatments.

Interests include supervised learning methods in infectious disease modeling, semiparametrics and Bayesian assessment of complex models.

Correlates analysis, sieve analysis and antigenic mapping focusing on HIV-1 vaccines and immunology.

Research interests include mathematical modeling of infectious diseases, evaluating impact of interventions for HIV prevention, mathematical biology (population dynamics, epidemic modeling) and dynamical systems (ODE, PDE, and impulsive systems).

Oversight for quality control of Good Clinical Lab Practice (GCLP)-compliant assays and is studying cellular immune responses to HIV vaccines for the Cape Town HVTN laboratory. Research involves interrogation of the phenotype and transcriptional profile of vaccine induced T cells in order to better understand these T cell responses.

Design and analysis of trials for HIV prevention, methods for meta-analysis of clinical trials, Bayesian approaches for extrapolation of efficacy between populations.

Research interests include statistical models of infectious diseases, analysis of observational and interventional studies, space-time modeling, and survey statistics.

B cell receptor sequence analysis

Statistical and computational methods for bioinformatics applications, statistical modeling for genome sequence analysis and statistical modeling frameworks. The interface between computer science, statistics, and molecular biology and such as development of new informatics methods in genomics and post-genomics.

Research interests include development of cellular immunotherapies for HIV, chimeric antigen receptor design and in vitro testing, in vitro and in situ imaging of chimeric antigen receptor T cells.

Clinical trial design and operations, good clinical data management practices (GCDMP), research regulations, behavioral research methodology, research ethics.

Current studies include development of methods for T-cell based sieve analysis, quantification of vaccine induced T cell responses, systems biology of influenza and time-dependent correlates analysis of HIV efficacy trial.

HVTN cross-protocol analyses

Immune monitoring and correlative science analyses for early clinical trials in the area of cancer immunotherapy.

Research area includes immunology and vaccine design for development of vaccines, especially HIV-1 and SARS-CoV-2.

Research area includes developing mathematical and statistical models to study viral evolution, immune correlates in infectious diseases (HIV, HCV, and SARS-CoV-2 in particular), and vaccine design. 

Roles of regulatory T cells in modulating anti-viral immunity, understanding the host immune response in anti-viral immunity and vaccine development.

Construction and evaluation of recombinant viral vectors for B cell engineering studies in mouse, human, and non-human primates. Molecular analyses of B cell responses to vaccination and tumor antigens. Binding and structural studies on neutralizing antibodies and their pathogen targets. Development of mono-, bi-, and tri-specific single-chain antibodies for B cell engineering studies and therapeutics. Optimization of Fc effector functions and circulation half-life for improved antibody therapeutics.

Immunology and vaccine design for development of vaccines, especially HIV-1 vaccine.

Design and analytic methods for HIV prevention trials and measurement-error modeling and bias correction.

Utilizing computational immunology approaches to (1) reveal disease-induced specific immune responses and subsets in the temporal and spatial patterns; (2) explore the mechanism and disparity of vaccine protection; (3) discover the mechanism of individual variances in immune responses.

Research interests include high-dimensional testing, post-selection inference, statistical analysis and designs of platform trials, survival analysis, and vaccine efficacy evaluation.

Design and analysis of vaccine/monoclonal antibody clinical trials; immunological biomarker studies related to the prevention of infectious diseases; Pharmacokinetics modeling.

Within the Bedford Lab, work includes independent research, software development, and educational outreach and mentorship. Research focus involves the evolution of seasonal influenza viruses, development of computational models to predict the composition of future influenza populations, and contribution of reports to the World Health Organization’s vaccine composition meetings. Also a core developer of Nextstrain’s real-time pathogen surveillance tools including the Augur bioinformatics toolkit and the SARS-CoV-2 genomic epidemiology workflow. This work builds on previous professional roles as a bioinformatics specialist and software developer and previous educational experiences including a master’s degrees in computer science and biology.

Immunologic endpoint determination for experimental vaccines (HIV, pneumococcus, malaria, TB, flu) and Logistics, operations, quality assurance, and assay validation for immunologic evaluation of vaccines in the clinical trial setting.

Research interests include understanding how the microbiome regulates our immune response, especially in the context of vaccination. In particular, studying how microbial exposure shapes immune development and the response to vaccination.

Developing statistical methods for the analysis of spatial transcriptomics and spatial genomics data.

Design and analysis of vaccine efficacy trials, genotype-specific vaccine efficacy-based sieve analysis, immune correlates of vaccine protection, analysis of vaccine-induced immune response durability and survival analysis.

Research interests include vaccine manufacturing, characterization and immunological evaluation of drug substance and drug product, and vaccine adjuvant studies.

HIV vaccine development and trial design, combination HIV prevention, mucosal immunology and mucosal sampling design in HIV prevention trials, the intersection of oncology and infectious disease, comparative effectiveness, decision analysis and health-related quality of life.

Research interests include Cancer Immunology/Translational Immunology/Viral Immunology/Cellular Immunology, immune monitoring and correlative science data analyses in cancer immunotherapy clinical trials.

Research focus includes studying the barrier and immune mechanisms that contribute to protection after circumcision, vaccine or passive immunizations at mucosal sites of encounter with HIV.

Development of genetic statistical methodologies, including phylogenetic tree reconstruction from genetic sequences.

Application of statistical and machine learning methods in molecular genetics and immunology of infectious diseases. Study relationship of human host genetics, SARS-Cov-2 clinical symptoms and immunogenicity reaction. Longitudinal immunogenicity reactions after SARS-Cov-2 infection. SARS-Cov-2 and HIV virus evolutionary dynamics over time and clonal dynamics interactions in human hosts and HIV infected population. Population dynamics of infectious disease transmission and interactions between hosts and pathogen from molecular genetics point of view. Quantitative evaluation of early detection of cancer and infectious diseases.

Research interests include the development of HIV vaccines for adults and children. Part of the core leadership team on network strategic planning and implementation, as the HVTN Chief of Staff. Primary research focus is in the HVTN’s phase 1 experimental medicine program for induction of broadly neutralizing antibodies against sites of vulnerability on the HIV envelope protein.

Research lies at the interface of mathematics, computer science, biology, and public health policy. Utilizing and developing quantitative tools including dynamical systems, differential equations, stochastic processes, operations research and optimization to understand complex biological processes.

Research interests include analysis of immune responses to vaccine candidates, study design for challenge studies, statistical methods for biological assays, mathematical models of viral load kinetics, and pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modeling.

Research focus includes the role of the microbiome in human health and disease.

Research focus includes design and analysis of vaccine clinical trials, immune correlates of risk and protection, statistical training and capacity building.

Mathematical modeling of HIV and CoVID epidemiology

HIV vaccine development and clinical trial design. Monoclonal antibodies clinical trial design for HIV prevention. Mucosal sampling in HIV prevention clinical trials. Leadership in developing and implementing clinical trials for HIV vaccines and monoclonal antibodies. Safety monitoring oversight for clinical trials.

Immune profiling of antigen-specific B cell responses to vaccines and infection.

Oversight of the Good Clinical Lab Practice (GCLP) - compliant assays and studies cellular immune responses to candidate vaccines at the HVTN End Point GCLP laboratory. Execute assays supporting the HVTN and CoVPN clinical trials and assist with clinical trial operations. Research interests include single-cell genomics and high parameter flow cytometry to examine vaccine-induced T cells' proliferative capabilities, phenotypic traits, and migration potential.

Identifying correlates of immune response in immunotherapy trials

Infectious disease biologist researching prevention strategies for globally important pathogens such as HIV, tuberculosis, and COVID-19.

Creates mathematical models of viral and immune system dynamics and evolution. Uses theoretical and computational methods to better understand host-pathogen interplay and inform the development of preventative and curative interventions.

Research focus includes preclinical animal models for vaccines and adjuvants testing, vaccine product development and clinical trial design, vaccine adjuvants, formulations and innate immune responses, immunological evaluation of vaccines and project management for collaborative research projects.

Research focus includes the analysis of humoral immune response to HSV-2 and its vaccine candidates and understanding the role of tissue B cells in HSV-2 infection.

Research interests include the design and analysis of group-sequential and complex clinical trials, specifically as pertaining to HIV prevention trials.

Research focus includes ecology of human microbial communities, impact of bacterial interactions on health and disease, molecular diagnosis of bacterial pathogens and bacterial adaptive responses.

Research focus includes development of DNA editing enzymes that target the genomes of viruses that undergo latent infections and viral vectors for gene delivery to sites of latent viral infection.

Research focus includes the development and application of statistical methods to account for measurement error, missing data and selection bias in regression analyses of cross-sectional, longitudinal or survival data from clinical trials and observational studies in cancer and HIV/AIDS prevention research areas.

HIV and COVID-19 vaccine development and trial design

Research commitment, inquiry, and interests are situated at the intersection of public health and social justice to further understand and mitigate the impacts of structural and social factors like stigma, racism, sexism, homophobia/transphobia, historical trauma, and education and income inequities on population-level health. Particularly interested in the health and wellbeing of Black and LGBTQ populations.

Development of viral vectors to cure latent infections with herpesviruses

Research is focused on statistical analysis of survey data, Bayesian modeling including Bayesian nonparametrics and the design and analysis of vaccine studies.

Statistical methods in HIV/AIDS research and monitoring and analyzing drug adherence patterns. Transmission models for infectious disease epidemiology.