Agenda

Matthew Weitzman grew up in Britain, graduating with a degree in Genetics from Leeds University and a PhD in Molecular Virology from Oxford Brookes. He was a Fogarty Fellow at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and was also a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. He started his independent lab as a faculty member of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California and University of California, San Diego. In 2011 he moved to his current position where he is Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and runs a lab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. His lab employs techniques in biochemistry, genetics and cell biology to harness human DNA viruses as model systems to investigate fundamental cellular processes.

Thomas Stamminger is Chair of Virology and Director of the Institute for Virology at Ulm University Medical Center (Ulm, Germany). Previously, he was Associate Professor at the Institute of Clinical and Molecular Virology in Erlangen. The Stamminger lab investigates human cytomegalovirus pathogenesis and virus-host interactions. Recent studies focus on intrinsic antiviral immune mechanisms and antagonizing viral factors.

Marta Gaglia is an associate professor of Molecular Biology and Microbiology at Tufts University School of Medicine. She received her PhD at University of California San Francisco. She developed her interest in virus-host interactions as a postdoctoral fellow at University of California Berkeley, where she began working on herpesviruses. She started her independent laboratory in 2014 at Tufts, where she continues to study how viruses repurpose host machinery for gene regulation and immune evasion in Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus and influenza A virus infections.

Joshua Munger is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Rochester Medical Center. He obtained his Bachelor of Science degree at Virginia Tech and subsequently joined Bernard Roizman’s laboratory at the University of Chicago, where he obtained his doctoral degree. As a post-doctoral fellow, he worked in Thomas Shenk’s laboratory at Princeton University. Since joining the faculty at the University of Rochester his lab has studied the mechanisms through which Human Cytomegalovirus modulates cellular metabolism and alters innate immune signal transduction to support productive infection.

Professor Michelle West is Deputy Head of the School of Life Sciences (Research and Enterprise) at the University of Sussex, UK where she is a Professor of Tumour Virology. She obtained her Batchelors degree in Biochemistry from the University of Warwick and carried out her PhD work in the Department of Cancer Studies at the University of Birmingham working with Professor Martin Rowe on the regulation of transcription by Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). Professor West continued her gene regulation work at the University of Leicester working with Professor Anne Willis on translational regulation of the MYC oncogene. She returned to Virology in her second postdoctoral position at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge working with Professor Jon Karn on transcriptional regulation by Human Immunodeficiency Virus 1. Professor West then established her own group at Sussex studying the molecular mechanisms involved in B cell transformation by EBV. Her research investigates how B cells are transcriptionally re-programmed by EBV with a focus on the structure and function of EBV transcription factors, long-range gene control and 3D chromatin interactions and cell cycle control mechanisms.

Dr. Dembowski is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Duquesne University. She received her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of Pittsburgh for her work on the investigation of alternative pre-mRNA splicing regulation in the nervous system. She then performed postdoctoral work at Carnegie Mellon University where she studied mechanisms of eukaryotic ribosome assembly. She then joined the laboratory of Dr. Neal DeLuca at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine where she was promoted to Research Assistant Professor. There she developed approaches to purify herpes simplex virus genomes from infected cells for the identification of associated proteins by mass spectrometry. These studies revealed the dynamics of viral and host protein interactions with HSV-1 genomes throughout the course of lytic infection, as well as host proteins that selectively associate with viral replication forks. Now at Duquesne University, the Dembowski lab focuses on investigating the roles viral genome associated cellular proteins play in viral DNA replication, repair, and gene expression.

Anna Cliffe is an Assistant Professor of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology at the University of Virginia (UVa) in Charlottesville, Virginia. She received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh, where she investigated the role of viral tRNA-like molecules in MHV-68 infection. Upon completing her PhD, she moved to Dr. David Knipe's laboratory at Harvard Medical School to investigate the chromatin control of HSV-1 lytic replication and latency. She then moved to Dr. Mohanish Deshmukh's laboratory in the Neuroscience Center at UNC Chapel Hill, where she used a primary neuronal model of HSV-1 latency to investigate how neuronal stress triggers reactivation. Using multiple model systems including primary neuronal cultures, induced human neurons and animal models, research in her lab aims to understand how viral gene silencing occurs in neurons, the intersection between the viral genome and host immune signaling and the contribution of HSV infection to the development of neurodegenerative disease.

Dr. Rona Scott is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Louisiana State University Health Shreveport. She received her B.S. in Biochemistry from Penn State University and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She initiated her post-doctoral training with Dr. Glenn Matsushima at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill discovering that the Mer tyrosine kinase was required for efferocytosis. She then moved to Louisiana State University Health Shreveport to complete her post-doctoral studies with Dr. John Sixbey studying oncogenic mechanisms of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection. She established her own laboratory in 2009 focused on understanding the epigenetic consequences of EBV epithelial infection and how co-infection between EBV and human papillomavirus can promote the progression of oral squamous cell carcinoma.

Dongli Pan is a professor at the Department of Medical Microbiology and Parasitology of Zhejiang University School of Medicine. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry at University of Pennsylvania. Then he performed postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Donald M. Coen at Harvard Medical School. There he studied drug-resistant HSV-1 thymidine kinase mutants as well as roles of viral and host miRNAs in HSV-1 infection. He was recruited by Zhejiang University in 2015. His work led to the discovery of several mechanisms related to regulation of HSV infection by viral and host miRNAs. His laboratory focuses on HSV-host interactions, particularly how host factors, including host miRNAs and transcription factors, influence the balance between lytic and latent infections.

Meaghan Hancock is an Assistant Professor at the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute (VGTI) at Oregon Health and Science University in Beaverton, Oregon. She received her B. Sc. in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 2004. During her undergraduate studies she worked in the laboratory of Dr. Karen Mossman studying viral mediated activation of IRF3. Her Ph.D. research was conducted in the laboratory of Dr. Jim Smiley at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada where she studied the roles of herpes simplex virus proteins VP16 and ICP0 in overcoming innate barriers to viral gene expression. She began her post-doctoral training at the VGTI in 2010 in the laboratory of Dr. Jay Nelson, studying human cytomegalovirus (CMV) miRNAs. She is currently investigating the role of HCMV miRNAs in modulating cellular signaling pathways during latency and reactivation in CD34+ hematopoietic progenitor cells. Additionally, she is also involved in developing CMV-based vaccines for HIV, SARS-CoV2 and other pathogens and uses miRNA targeting to alter CMV tropism in order to better understand the unique immune responses elicited by CMV-based vaccine vectors.

Dr. Georges Verjans is an Associate Professor at the department of Viroscience of the Erasmus Medical Center (Rotterdam, The Netherlands). He holds a MSc from the University of Utrecht and PhD from the University of Amsterdam. As post-doc he joined the department of Viroscience led by Dr. Albert Osterhaus to start his own lab, the Herpeslab. His team’s research is focused on unravelling the virus/host interactions involved in the immune control and pathogenesis of gamma- and particularly alpha-herpesvirus infections of the human nervous system and eye.

Erle Robertson is the Harry P. Schenk Endowed Chair Professor of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. He is also the current Vice-Chair for Research in the Department, and the Associate Director for Global Cancer Research at the Abramson Cancer Center, and Professor in Microbiology. His lab investigates the mechanisms by which human oncogenic gammaherpesviruses drives associated malignancies by studying their role in dysregulation of cellular processes including transcription reprogramming, cell cycle regulation, and survival. He also studies the persistence of the virus in the infected cells that provides insights into their long term survival.

Sandra Weller is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and former Chair of Molecular Biology & Biophysics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. She received her bachelor of science degree in Biology with honors from Stanford University and her doctorate in Molecular Biology from the University of Wisconsin where she worked with Howard Temin on cytopathic retroviruses. Her laboratory focuses on Herpes Simplex Virus replication/recombination and antiviral drug discovery as well as viral interactions with the host DNA damage and protein homeostasis pathways. She is a cofounder of Quercus Molecular Design, a small, biotech start-up focused on developing new drugs for the treatment of infectious diseases. QMD is focused on the development of small molecule inhibitors of viral enzymes that utilize two-metal ion-dependent (TMID) mechanisms.

Nick Buchkovich obtained his Ph.D. degree in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Pennsylvania where he studied human cytomegalovirus with Dr. Jim Alwine. His graduate work focused on how HCMV modulates the cellular stress responses and the effect on viral assembly and the cytoplasmic assembly complex. He continued his training as a postdoc at Cornell University where he studied the ESCRT machinery in the lab of Dr. Scott Emr. Currently Nick is an Associate Professor at the Penn State College of Medicine where his lab continues to study virus-host interactions with an emphasis of understanding the molecular mechanisms that drive HCMV assembly.

Melanie Brinkmann is Professor of Virology at the Technische Universität Braunschweig and group leader at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig, Germany. She received her PhD in Biology from the Leibniz University Hannover in 2004 and joined the lab of Hidde Ploegh at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, USA, as a postdoctoral fellow. She started her own research group at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig in 2010, and focused her research on herpesviral immune evasion of the pattern recognition receptor-mediated immune response and gained novel insights into cellular mechanisms of the innate immune response to viral infection. Since July 2018, she is Professor at the Technische Universität Braunschweig where she teaches genetics and virology.

Professor Allison Abendroth has a Bachelor of Science Honours (First class) and a PhD from the University of Adelaide, studying neurobiology of herpes simplex virus. In 1996 she undertook Postdoctoral training at Stanford University, USA where she studied varicella zoster virus (VZV) immunobiology and pathogenesis. In 2000 she established the VZV Research Laboratory at the University of Sydney and in 2001 was awarded a Rolf Edgar Lake Fellowship. Her research interests focus on the immunopathogenesis of human herpesviruses. In 2004 she was appointed to a Faculty position at the University of Sydney in the Discipline of Infectious Diseases and Immunology. She is currently Professor and Head of the Viral Immunology Laboratory, School of Medical Sciences at the University of Sydney where she undertakes research and teaches immunology and virology. Her laboratory has gained novel insights into how viruses such as VZV and herpes simplex virus (HSV) can interact with key human immune cell types to evade innate and adaptive immune responses.

Linda van Dyk is a Professor of Immunology and Microbiology at the Colorado University Anschutz School of Medicine. She received her PhD in Immunology at the University of Texas Southwestern, and did post-doctoral training with Sam Speck and Skip Virgin at Washington University. During her post-doctoral fellowship, she applied cell cycle biochemistry and immune regulation to new virology training studying the murine gammaherpesvirus. Since joining the faculty at the University of Colorado, her lab has studied molecular interactions between virus and host and their consequences on infection and pathogenesis.

Martine Aubert obtained her Ph.D degree in Bacterial Genetics studying Streptomyces ambofaciens genome instability at the University of Nancy-1, France. She then pursued a postdoctoral fellowship in Virology in the laboratory of Dr. John A. Blaho at Mount Sinai school of Medicine in New York, studying HSV-1 inhibition of apoptosis. She then joined the laboratory of Dr. Keith R. Jerome at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle as a staff scientist to study virus-host interactions during HSV lytic replication. Currently, she is a senior staff scientist in Dr. Jerome’s laboratory and is leading efforts to develop and evaluate gene editing therapies that target the latent viral genome as a novel curative therapy for HSV disease.

Timothy F. Kowalik, PhD, is the Dr. Marcellette G. Williams Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Microbiology and Physiological Systems at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. His graduate training at Utah State University focused on agriculturally significant orbiviruses. This was followed by postdoctoral fellowships at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (under the late Eng-Shang (Clark) Huang) and Duke University. The Kowalik laboratory studies HCMV in virus-cell interactions in vitro and viral population genetics in clinical infections.

Dr. Sankar Swaminathan is the chief of the Infectious Diseases Division at University of Utah School of Medicine where he is the Don Merrill Presidential Endowed Chair and Professor of Medicine. He received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and his medical degree and Master’s degree in Microbiology and Immunology from Emory University. He did an Internal Medicine Residency at the University of Chicago Medical Center and clinical and research fellowships in Infectious Diseases at Harvard Medical School. At Harvard he trained with Dr. Elliott Kieff where he worked on Epstein Barr virus replication and cell transformation. Prior to joining the University of Utah, he was Professor of Internal Medicine in Infectious Diseases and director of the Tumor Virology Program at the University of Florida. Dr. Swaminathan's research focuses on the regulation of gene expression in EBV and KSHV. Major areas of his research include viral transcriptional and post-transcriptional mechanisms and virus-host interactions.

Jung is Betsy B. deWindt Professor, Chair of Cancer Biology Department, and Director of Global and Emerging Pathogen Research Center at Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic. Previously, Jung was professor at Harvard Medical School and Distinguished Professor, Chair and Director at University of Southern California. Jung studies Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated virus-induced cancer and host-virus interaction.

Tomohiko Sadaoka is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Infectious Diseases, Kobe University (in the Division of Clinical Virology organized by Prof. Yasuko Mori). After graduating School of Dentistry at Tokushima University, he joined the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at Osaka University (Prof. Yoshiaki Yura) as a graduate student/dentist. He received a PhD/DDS for his work on HHV-7 glycoprotein complex in the Lab of Prof. Koichi Yamanishi at Osaka University. His postdoctoral studies were focused on VZV molecular biology through a BAC mutagenesis approach in the Lab of Prof. Yasuko Mori. During 2013-2015, he was awarded the Japan Herpesvirus Infections Forum Scholarship and joined the Lab of Dr. Jeffrey Cohen at the NIH. Here, Tomohiko developed a VZV latency model using human pluripotent stem cell derived neurons in collaboration with Drs Arun Venkatesan (Johns Hopkins University), Daniel Depledge (UCL, NYU, Hannover Medical School), and Judith Breuer (UCL). Following his contribution to the identification of the VZV latency-associated transcript, he expanded his international network and his current research is focused on identifying and characterizing the mechanisms that govern VZV latency and reactivation in collaboration with Drs Daniel Depledge, Arun Venkatesan, Werner Ouwendijk and Georges Verjans (Erasmus Medical Center).

Dr. Joshua A. Hill is an Assistant Professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) and the University of Washington (UW). His research program is focused on clinical and translational studies to improve preventive and treatment strategies for infections in patients receiving hematopoietic cell transplantations (HCT) and CAR-T cell therapies. Dr. Hill trained in Transplant Infectious Diseases at FHCRC and epidemiology/biostatics at the Harvard School of Public Health. He serves as an attending physician on the Immunocompromised Host Infectious Diseases Service at the FHCRC, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA), and UW Medical Center.

Rozanne M. Sandri-Goldin PhD is a Chancellor’s Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics in the School of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Sandri-Goldin conducts research focused on a multifunctional regulatory protein of herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) termed ICP27. ICP27 is required for all stages of viral gene expression during HSV-1 lytic infection from transcription through RNA processing and export to translation. Her studies are directed towards a structure-functional analysis of ICP27. Dr. Sandri-Goldin was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology and she is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She served as President of American Society for Virology for 2009-2010 and she is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Virology.