Dr. Michael E. Grigg is the Chief of the Molecular Parasitology Section at the Laboratory of
Parasitic Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
(NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA. He earned his B.Sc. in 1989
from the University of British Columbia. He obtained his Ph.D. and D.I.C. in
1994 from the Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine, University
of London. From 1994 to 1997, Dr. Grigg was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute
senior fellow at the University of Washington. From 1997 to 2001, he trained as
a postdoctoral scholar in Molecular Parasitology at Stanford University. In
2002, he was appointed at the assistant professor level in Medicine,
Microbiology, and Immunology at the University of British Columbia. In 2006, he
joined the Laboratory of Parasitic Disease as a tenure-track investigator. In
2013, he was appointed senior investigator at NIH. He is also an adjunct
professor at the University of British Columbia and Oklahoma State University. His
research interests include virulence shifts in protozoan parasites: biology and
genetics; forward/reverse genetics and functional genomic screens that identify
protozoan virulence factors; immunoparasitology and mechanisms of host
resistance against protozoan parasites; and parasite gene families that modulate
host immunity, infectivity, and parasite pathogenesis.
Dr. Fadila Bouamr is the Chief of the Viral Budding Unit at the Laboratory of Molecular
Microbiology, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National
Institutes of Health (NIH), USA. She received her Ph.D. from Victor Segalen
Bordeaux University in 1997. She performed her postdoctoral research with Dr.
Carol Carter at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and with Dr.
Steve Goff at Columbia University. She joined the Laboratory of Molecular
Microbiology, NIAID, NIH, in December 2004. Dr. Bouamr’s research focus is on the
recruitment and function of cellular factors that facilitate virus separation
from cells; structure–function studies of proteins involved in these processes;
the role of ubiquitin in virus egress and membrane scission and other cellular
processes important for various steps of the virus life cycle. She is also
interested in virus assembly and trafficking to sites of virus budding.
Dr. Sonja M. Best is the Chief of the Laboratory of Neurological Infections and Immunity at the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National
Institutes of Health (NIH), USA. She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and
Molecular Biology from the Australian National University, where she studied the
pathogenesis of myxoma virus, a poxvirus. She conducted her postdoctoral
research at Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) on the complex role of apoptosis
in the replication of parvoviruses. She stayed at RML as a Research Fellow and
then a Staff Scientist to investigate virus–host interactions involved in
flavivirus pathogenesis. In 2009, Dr. Best established an independent
laboratory as a tenure-track investigator to expand her studies on interactions
between pathogenic viruses and the host immune response. In 2011, she was
awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for her
work on flavivirus suppression of innate immune responses. Dr. Best’s current
interests include mechanisms utilized by pathogenic viruses to modulate host
innate immunity; the role of novel IFN-stimulated genes (ISGs) in host
resistance to virus infection; and the importance of dendritic cell (DC)
function to anti-viral innate and adaptive immune responses.
Prof. Peijun Zhang is a professor of Structural Biology in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at Oxford University and the founding director of eBIC (the UK National Electron Bio-imaging Centre) at
Diamond Light Source. She obtained her Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics from the
University of Virginia and her M.S. in Physics and B.S. in Electrical Engineering
from Nanjing University. She carried out postdoctoral work at the National
Cancer Institute. In 2006, she joined the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh
School of Medicine as an assistant professor and was promoted to tenured
associate professor in 2012. Her research focuses on the structural and
functional studies of large molecular complexes and assemblies, viruses, and
cellular machinery using integrated structural, biochemical, and computational
approaches to understand biological complexity. Prof. Zhang has received many
awards, including the Carnegie Science Emerging Female Scientist Award, the
Senior Vice Chancellor’s Award, and an Award from the United States Department
of Health and Human Services.
