After a BSc in Biochemistry and Genetics from Newcastle University in England, he received a MSc in Molecular Biology from the University of Geneva in Switzerland. He then worked for two years as a research technician for Genentech Inc in California. In 1990. He received his PhD from the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin in Madison where he studied envelope-receptor interactions of an avian retrovirus and designed early HIV vectors. During his post-doctoral training at Stanford he developed a simple assay to subtype and measure HIV quasispecies diversity using electrophoretic DNA heteroduplex mobility shifts. A kit for this assay was developed by the NIH AIDS program and provided to many labs. He helped organize international training sessions led by the WHO on the use of this technique. The same methodology has since been used to analyze other highly genetically variable viruses such as HCV. He then joined the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research center (an affiliate of NYU then Rockefeller) and studied HIV evolution during disease progression and emergence of anti-viral drug resistance. In 1999, he moved to the Blood Systems Research Institute, the research arm of the second biggest (non-profit) blood bank in the US (after the Red Cross), with an adjunct faculty appointment in the UCSF dept of Laboratory Medicine. Here, he worked on genetic analyses of blood borne viruses including HIV/HCV/HBV/WNV/ZKV. In 2005 his lab was among the first to use NGS for viral discovery and has since characterized the genomes of numerous previously unknown human viruses. His team also showed the utility of viral metagenomics for detecting viral contaminants in biopharmaceutical products, a method gradually replacing older approaches involving inoculation of rodents and cell cultures. The more recent focus of my lab has been in the One Health domain through multiple collaborations with veterinary scientists to identify potential pathogens in pets, farm animals, and wild-life. He has been awarded NIH R01s and other grants and trained numerous post-docs from the US, Brazil, China, Thailand, Kenya, Vietnam, France, Finland, Australia, India, and Turkey. He has >360 papers in PubMed and an h score of 85.
His goals as WSV VP for the US will be to facilitate interactions between US labs/institutions and scientists from throughout the world. He is particularly interested in enhancing surveillance for emerging viruses in both human and animals and the development of novel vaccine platforms. He strongly believes that the prevention of future zoonotic pandemics will require minimizing interactions between humans and wild animals, rapid local recognition of novel disease outbreaks, and rapid responses including vaccine development and distribution. Analyses of biological samples from symptomatic human and both healthy and diseased animals can play a role identifying viruses of high concern as well as improve animal husbandry. Too many people rely on wild animals for their subsistence thereby increasing risk of zoonosis. Increasing food security (through improvement in farm animal health) will also reduce future zoonotic risks. The World Society of Virology can help in these goals through cross-counties training and improved communication between doctors, veterinarians, epidemiologists, and basic researchers.