About the Board of Editors
Senior Editors
IRA BLADER, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at SUNY Buffalo's Department of Microbiology and Immunology. His research team is focused on identifying how transcription factors function and how the parasite adapts to the various oxygen environments it encounters during its life cycle. Additionally, the team is exploring our understanding of how Toxoplasma causes ocular disease by developing a murine ocular toxoplasmosis model to identify parasite virulence factors and to study immune responses in the eye. Dr. Blader previously served as an Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center. He is currently a panel member of the NIH Pathogenic Eukaryotes Study Section. More
PATRICIA BRADFORD, Ph.D., is the founder of Antimicrobial Development Specialists, LLC. Previously, she has worked for AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, Novartis, Wyeth, and Lederle Pharmaceuticals, where she contributed to several development programs for antibiotics, including piperacillin-tazobactam, tigecycline, and ceftazidime-avibactam. She has also led biology efforts on discovery platforms for antibiotics and antivirals and has managed a diverse group of scientists working in microbiology, pharmacology, biochemistry, and bioinformatics.
SARAH D'ORAZIO, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. Dr. D'Orazio's dissertation work at the University of Miami School of Medicine focused on bacterial pathogenesis, and she did a postdoctoral fellowship in immunology at Harvard Medical School. Research in her lab focuses on understanding the complex interplay between the virulence strategies of the bacterial pathogen Listeria monocytogenes and the immune defense mechanisms of the host. Her lab uses a mouse model of foodborne infection to study how the balance of these factors results in a wide spectrum of human disease, ranging from mild, self-limiting gastroenteritis to life-threatening systemic infections that can invade both the brain and the placenta. Dr. D’Orazio received her Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from the University of Miami School of Medicine. More
PAUL DUPREX, Ph.D., is Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Director of the Center for Vaccine Research, and Jonas Salk Chair for Vaccine Research at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. His research involves understanding the molecular basis of pathogenesis and attenuation of respiratory paramyxoviruses, with the aim of developing rationally attenuated vaccines for these viruses. Dr. Duprex serves as an editor for FEMS Microbiological Reviews, Journal of General Virology, and PLOS Pathogens. He received his Ph.D. from The Queen's University of Belfast. More
CRAIG D. ELLERMEIER, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Microbiology at the University of Iowa. More
ANA FERNANDEZ-SESMA, Ph.D., Dr. Ana Fernandez-Sesma received her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the Mount Sinai Graduate School of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is currently a professor in the Department of Microbiology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS). The areas of study in her laboratory include the modulation and control of innate immunity by human pathogens, such as dengue virus (DENV), influenza virus, and other RNA viruses of interest to humans. Her group has optimized and developed several assays to study the initiation/modulation of immune responses in human primary immune cells, such as dendritic cells (DCs) and macrophages, as well as primary lung epithelial cells and human tonsils. Her team identified specific host factors that determine the host tropism of DENV and how the DENV protease complex can target those host factors for degradation in order to establish infection. More
KATHERINE McMAHON, Ph.D., is a Professor at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, in the Departments of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Bacteriology. Dr. McMahon’s lab studies the microbial ecology of both natural and engineered systems using molecular tools to investigate microbial community structure and function in lakes and activated sludge. Her team uses molecular tools to investigate microbial community composition, dynamics, and function, while integrating principles of ecology and engineering to explain observed patterns. Dr. McMahon received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. More
AARON MITCHELL, Ph.D., is a Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on Candida albicans, with the objective of defining the determinants of pathogenicity and drug responses in order to identify strategies to improve diagnosis and therapeutics. Dr. Mitchell's work has two goals: (1) to define the regulatory pathways and signals that promote biofilm formation and to understand the steps in biofilm development that they control, and (2) to determine how regulatory pathways are rewired during infection and what the ultimate outputs may be that permit growth in the infection environment. Dr. Mitchell served as Editor in Chief of Eukaryotic Cell® from 2010 to 2015. He is also an associate editor for PLOS Pathogens, a section editor for PLOS Pathogens, and a member of Faculty of 1000 (Medical Microbiology). He received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. More
MARCELA PASETTI, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Microbiology and Immunology and a faculty member of the Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the characterization of immune responses following infection and vaccination in animal models and in humans. Her main areas of interest are maternal-infant immunization and the induction of protective immunity during pregnancy and early in life. Dr. Pasetti also studies mucosal immunity, particularly the role of antibodies in protection against mucosal pathogens. Through several NIH- and foundation-supported projects, her group is investigating mechanisms by which maternal immunity prevents shigellosis in young infants, serological predictors of Shigella vaccine efficacy, the role of vaccine-induced IgG in preventing B. pertussis infection, immune responses induced by novel adjuvants in humans, and markers of immunity to vaccine-preventable disease in young children. In addition, Dr. Pasetti oversees the CVD Applied Immunology Section, which develops, refines, and performs a variety of immunological assays to support human clinical studies. More
SUSANNAH TRINGE, Ph.D., is head of the Metagenome Program at the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, where she oversees research using DNA sequence data to study communities of microbes from diverse environmental niches. Her major research interests relate to microbial influences on greenhouse gas uptake and release in wetlands and how microbes interact with plants to affect growth, health, and disease resistance. Dr. Tringe received her undergraduate degree in physics from Harvard University and then went on to a Ph.D. in biophysics from Stanford University. From there, she spent a few years in a yeast genetics lab at the University of New Mexico before joining Dr. Edward Rubin's group at Berkeley Lab as a postdoc in 2003. There she developed techniques for using DNA sequence data for comparative analysis of whole microbial communities, rather than individual organisms, a field now known as metagenomics. In 2011, she was awarded an Early Career Research grant from the Department of Energy to study microbial communities in wetlands and the potential for wetland restoration to serve as an effective carbon sink. More