Dr. Priscila M.S. Castanha completed her bachelor’s degree in biology from the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco, Brazil, in 2008. She then earned her MPH (2011) and PhD (2016) degrees at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ), Brazil, where she studied mosquito-borne viral infections. As a Ph.D. candidate, she was awarded two scholarships (Global Infectious Diseases Research Training, Fogarty, University of Pittsburgh; and Inter-University Exchange Doctoral Program, Brazilian federal government) to spend two years (2013-2015) at the Center for Vaccine Research, University of Pittsburgh (CVR/ PITT) as a Visiting Researcher. She joined the faculty team at the department of Infectious Disease and Microbiology (IDM), University of Pittsburgh, in 2023 as an Assistant Professor. Her primary teaching responsibilities are within IDM and the Bachelor of Science in Public Health (BSPH) program. In addition to laboratory-based research in the US, she kept her collaborative ties with Brazilian researchers and institutions as an affiliated junior faculty member at the University of Pernambuco. Her broad research interests include virus–host–vector interactions at the cutaneous interface, antibody-mediated pathogenesis and immune interactions between arboviruses, epidemiology and transmission dynamics of emerging and re-emerging viruses, and ex vivo human model systems.
Simon M. Barratt-Boyes, BVSc, PhD, is a Professor of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology in the School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. He received a Bachelor of Veterinary Science from Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand, in 1984, and a PhD from the University of California, Davis, in 1993. His research interests include vaccination and monoclonal antibody prevention of severe influenza in the nonhuman primate model, and the transmission and spread of dengue and Zika virus infections in human skin. His scientific output includes 75 publications in various journals with an h-index of 29 (Scopus, April 2024).
