Major Research Consortia

The HIV/Cervical Cancer Prevention ‘CASCADE’ Clinical Trials Network is a global, NCI-funded partnership focused on optimizing the cervical cancer screening, management and pre-cancer treatment cascade for women living with HIV. BBE faculty member Dr. Elizabeth Brown leads one of the network’s Research Bases and provides scientific and statistical leadership for CASCADE clinical trials.

CFAR is housed at the University of Washington and funded by NIAID. CFAR advances knowledge in the clinical epidemiology, pathogenesis, treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS by fostering collaborative and interdisciplinary research. CFAR also supports junior investigator career development and provides research infrastructure and resources to scientists at affiliated institutions. BBE faculty member Dr. Elizabeth Brown directs the CFAR Data Sciences and Methods Core (DSMC) with Associate Director and Senior Staff Scientist Dr. Tracy Dong.

Funded by NIAID, the HVTN oversees worldwide clinical trials to test vaccines and monoclonal antibodies for the prevention of HIV/AIDS. The network designs and conducts all phases of clinical trials, from evaluating experimental vaccines for safety and immunogenicity to testing vaccine efficacy. The HVTN’s Statistical and Data Management Center (SDMC) is led by BBE faculty members Drs. Peter Gilbert, Yunda Huang and Holly Janes.

The NIAID-funded HPTN is a worldwide collaborative clinical trials network that brings together investigators and ethicists, as well as community and other partners, to develop and test the safety and efficacy of interventions designed to prevent the acquisition and transmission of HIV. BBE faculty members Drs. Elizabeth Brown and Deborah Donnell lead the HPTN’s SDMC.

The IDCRC and Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Units (VTEUs) work in tandem with NIAID as a coordinated national and global network of scientific experts working to develop and test vaccines and other therapies to combat infectious diseases. BBE faculty member Dr. Elizabeth Brown directs the IDCRC’s Statistical and Data Science Unit (SDSU) with Associate Director and Senior Staff Scientist Dr. Laina Mercer.

Founded by BBE faculty member Dr. Trevor Bedford and University of Basel Professor Richard Neher, Nextstrain has become part of the global public health infrastructure, providing a continually updated view into pathogen evolution. Nextstrain scientists analyze publicly available genome data in a reproducible fashion and disseminate these results using innovative, interactive visualizations publicly available at Nextstrain.org. Nextstrain was an indisputable source of truth during the COVID-19 pandemic for public health officials in the US and globally and continues to track the emergence of variants of concern today. In total, the transmission and evolution of 22 circulating pathogens are tracked by the Nextstrain team. These analyses inform vaccine strain selection for viruses such as seasonal influenza and provide situational awareness for active outbreaks. Recent examples include Ebola, mpox, H5N1 and Oropouche virus. Nextstrain.org also provides a platform for external users to share analyses. More than 40 research groups host and share over six thousand datasets on Nextstrain.org.

SEATRAC facilitates cutting-edge research and training of the next generation of tuberculosis (TB) leaders. The Data Science Core is led by BBE faculty member Dr. Andrew Fiore-Gartland with Dr. Shuyi Ma at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute (SCRI). They aim to accelerate and catalyze TB research through the expansion and enhancement of data science approaches, including biostatistics, bioinformatics, modeling and machine learning.

Funded by the Gates Foundation, VISC provides biostatistical and computational biology support for the Foundation’s HIV vaccine development initiative, Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery (CAVD), as well as its Global Health Discovery Collaboratory (GHDC), an international research network that aims to solve major global health challenges using innovative technology platforms. The VISC team brings rigorous technical expertise in study design and data management, as well as statistical, computational and dynamic modeling to clinical and preclinical projects. Their decades of collaborative experience in immunology, infectious disease and vaccine research cut across disease foci, including HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and COVID-19. VISC also partners with the Statistical Center for HIV/AIDS Research and Prevention (SCHARP) for management of laboratory data and other critical operational support. BBE faculty member Dr. Ollivier Hyrien serves as principal investigator and director of VISC, Dr. Solmaz Shotorbani serves as associate director, and Principal Staff Scientist Dr. Andrew Fiore-Gartland (GHDC) and Senior Staff Scientist Dr. Bryan Mayer (CAVD) act as scientific co-directors.