Dr. Joshua T. Schiffer is an infectious disease physician and researcher who develops mathematical models to address significant medical challenges at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and is a Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine. He holds an MS in Epidemiology from the University of Washington and an MD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. A major focus of his work is to analyze strategies to achieve an HIV cure in people who require antiviral drugs for their entire lifetime due to reservoirs of latent virus. These models assess the potential of a wide variety of potential curative technologies. Dr. Schiffer and colleagues also use mathematical modeling to study how T cells help control numerous herpes viruses that cause disease in healthy people and in cancer patients with compromised immune systems. They develop models to explain when and how latent viruses reactivate and use models to optimize the effectiveness of antiviral drugs. His team is also focusing on COVID-19, including developing models of the immune response against the coronavirus and the best treatment strategies.
