Goals

There is a need for better vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics to prevent and treat diseases that are triggered by infectious agents.

Our goals are to study the basic pathobiology of diseases caused by various pathogens and to develop better vaccine strategies. We will accomplish these goals through the following approaches.

• Study the host responses to infection in a longitudinal manner and to study host response and symptom changes over time.
• Selectively target extreme phenotypes within a given disease to understand immune pathogenesis.
• Use machine learning tools to reveal endotypes and underlying etiologies.
• Study links between acute infection and diseases including:
  • Acute Infection
  • Chronic sequelae of infection (long COVID, ME CFS)
  • Autoimmunity
  • Neurodegenerative diseases
  • Aging-related diseases
• Understand mechanisms of host resistance to pathogens and host disease tolerance to infectious diseases.
• Determine the impact of host intrinsic factors (age, sex, genetics) and extrinsic factors (environment, diet, medication, demographics) on host resistance and tolerance mechanisms against infectious diseases.
• Design and develop better vaccines against infectious agents.