Profiles

Irina R. Arkhipova Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts

Dr. Irina Arkhipova is a molecular evolutionary geneticist with a background in biochemistry and molecular biology. Her research deals with mobile DNA in its broader sense, including different types of transposable elements that can move within and between genomes, their genomic impact, genetic and epigenetic regulation, evolutionary origins, and the mechanisms underlying their mobility. She received her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University in 1983 and went on to receive her PhD in Molecular Biology from the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow in 1986. She serves as an expert on national and international advisory panels, as an Associate Editor of Molecular Biology and Evolution, and as the Editor-in-Chief of Mobile DNA. She is one of the founding members of the Mobile Genetic Element Cluster at the Marine Biological Laboratory, and since 2007 has been organizing regional, national and international meetings on mobile genetic elements.

Eddy Arnold Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey

Dr. Eddy Arnold received his BA, MS, and PhD in Organic Chemistry from Cornell University. He conducted his post-doctoral research on virus crystallography and virus structure at Purdue University between 1982 and 1987. In 1987, he accepted the position of Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University. He also serves as a resident faculty member at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine. Dr. Eddy Arnold and his colleagues are working to understand molecular mechanisms of drug resistance and apply structure-based drug design for the treatment of serious human diseases. Dr. Arnold is a member of the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, New Jersey’s only National Cancer Institute.

David Baltimore Scripps Research, La Jolla, California

Dr. David Baltimore is a biologist and 1975 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries concerning the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of the cell. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Biology at Caltech where he also served as President from 1997 to 2006. He served as the director of the Joint Center for Translational Medicine, which joined Caltech and University of California Los Angeles in a program to translate basic scientific discoveries into clinical realities. He also served as president of Rockefeller Institute, where he received his PhD studying animal virology, from 1990 to 1991, founder of the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research from 1982 to 1990, and was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007. In addition to the Nobel Prize, he is the recipient of a number of awards, including the U.S. National Medal of Science in 1999 and the Lasker Award in 2021. Dr. Baltimore sits on the Board of Sponsors for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and as a senior scientific advisor to the Science Philanthropy Alliance.

Karen Beemon Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland

Dr. Karen Beemon is a professor in Biology whose research focuses on the role of TERT and microRNAs in oncogenesis, retroviral RNA stability. She received her BS from university of Michigan in Cell Biology and went on to complete her PhD in Molecular Biology at University of California, Berkeley. There, she was the Editor of the Journal of Virology as well as a member of the RNA Society, American Society for Microbiology, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. She conducted her post-doctoral work at both University of California, Berkeley and Salk Institute. She accepted a position as Professor of biology at Johns Hopkins University in 1981 and in 2006, she became the first female Chair of Biology Department. Dr. Beemon won the 2007 Retrovirology Prize for her research. She also received a Faculty Research Award from the American Cancer Society as well as a Fogarty Senior International Fellowship.

J. Michael Bishop University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California

Dr. J. Michael Bishop is an immunologist and microbiologist and 1989 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine for his work on retroviral oncogenes. He serves as Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and Director of the GW Hooper Foundation at the University of California, San Francisco, where he also served as Chancellor from 1998 to 2009. Since 2004, he also has held the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Distinguished Professorship. Dr. Bishop is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He is the recipient of any awards aside from the Nobel Prize. Some of these include the National Medal of Science in 2003 and the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Award in 1982. He was elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2008 and in 2020, he received the Clark Kerr Award for distinguished leadership in higher education from the University of California Berkeley Academic Senate

Jef D. Boeke NYU Langone Health, New York, New York

Dr. Jef Boeke is Professor of Biochemistry and Pharmacology and Founding Director of the Institute for Systems Genetics, NYU Langone Health, since 2014. He is also Professor of Biomedical Engineering at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. From 1986-2013 he was at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He served as Professor of Molecular Biology & Genetics and was the Founding Director of the HiT Center, the first interdisciplinary Center in the International Brain Barriers Society. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from Bowdoin College and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Rockefeller University. Jef Boeke did postdoctoral work at MIT/Whitehead on yeast genetics from 1983 to 1985. Dr. Jef Boeke has also been active in Technology transfer, serving as a Founder of several biotech companies, as well as executing various licensing deals.

John M. Coffin Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts

Dr. John Coffin is a virologist and Professor of Molecular Biology at Tufts University. He received his PhD at University of Wisconsin-Madison in Molecular Biology. He is the former director of the HIV Dynamics and Replication Program of the National Cancer Institute and serves as Special Advisor to the Director of the Center for Cancer Research at the National Cancer Institute. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1999 and is a recipient of the American Cancer Society professorship. Dr. Coffin was program committee chair at the 18th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in 2011. His HIV/AIDS research reflects his interests in molecular biology, virus-host relationships, pathogenesis and viral evolution and population dynamics.

Kathleen Collins University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California

Dr. Kathleen Collins received her BS/MS in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry in 1987 and went on to earn her PhD in Biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992. She conducted her post-doctoral research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory from 1992 to 1995. She has been a visiting scientist at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Wakō, Japan and New England Biolabs in Ipswich, Massachusetts. In 1995, she began her professorship at University of California, Berkeley. Since 2020, she has served as the Division Head for Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology. In 2020, she was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Ronald Desrosiers University of Miami, Miami, Florida

Dr. Desrosiers is Professor of Pathology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and the Director of Research Faculty Development. Before moving to Miami seven years ago, he was tenured Professor of Microbiology at Harvard Medical School and served as Director of Harvard’s Primate Research Center. Dr. Desrosiers was the leader of the team that discovered the simian immunodeficiency virus in 1984 and was senior author of its publication in Science in 1985. In 1990, Dr. Desrosiers described the first-ever infectious, pathogenic molecular clone of this group of viruses and to this day it remains the clone of choice for controlled experiments in monkeys.

Jaquelin Dudley UT Texas at Austin, LaMontagne Center for Infectious Disease, Austin, Texas

Dr. Jaquelin Dudley is currently a professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology and Molecular Biosciences at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her Bachelor of Science in Medical Technology from West Virginia University in 1973 and went on to receive her PhD in Virology from Baylor College of Medicine. She conducted her post-doctoral research at University of California, San Francisco under Harold Varmus between 1978 and 1980. She also was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research under Rex Risser between 1980 and 1982. Her research interests include molecular biology and pathogenesis of retroviruses.

Hung Fan University of California, Irvine

Dr. Hung Fan is a professor of virology and molecular biology in the School of Biological Sciences at University of California Irvine and serves as director of the Cancer Research Institute. He received his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His work has appeared in numerous publications, and he is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology. Dr. Fan’s laboratory at University of California Irvine is investigating mouse retroviruses, by molecular biological techniques, as model systems for regulation of gene expression, chromatin structure, and carcinogenesis.

Robert C. Gallo University of Maryland, School of Medicine,Baltimore, Maryland; Global Virus Network (GVN), Baltimore, Maryland

Dr. Gallo is recognized internationally for his co-discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS. As a biomedical research scientist, he since has spent much of his career working to eliminate AIDS and other viral chronic diseases. Now, Dr. Gallo’s work continues at the Institute of Human Virology, an institute of the University of Maryland School of Medicine that Dr. Gallo helped found in 1996. In 2011, Dr. Gallo co-founded the Global Virus Network to position the world to rapidly respond to new or re-emerging viruses, to achieve collaboration among the world’s leading virologists, and to support next-generation training. Prior to becoming the Institute of Human Virology director in 1996, Dr. Gallo spent 30 years at the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute, where he was head of the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine and boasts many awards and prizes including the Albert Lasker Award in Medicine, once in 1982 and again in 1986, and the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor Award in 1983. Dr. Gallo received his BA in Biology in 1959 from Providence College and went on to receive his MD from Jefferson Medical College in 1963. He completed his Clinical Clerkship at Yale University School of Medicine in 1963 and conducted his residency at University of Chicago in 1965.

Stephen P. Goff Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York

Dr. Stephen Goff is Higgins Professor of Biochemistry at Columbia University Medical Center. He received the A.B. degree in Biophysics from Amherst College in 1973. His graduate work with Dr. Paul Berg at Stanford University focused on the use of SV40 as a viral vector for the expression of foreign DNAs in mammalian cells. He did postdoctoral work with Dr. David Baltimore at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the replication of the murine leukemia viruses as a Jane Coffin Childs fellow, and joined the Columbia faculty in 1981. Dr. Goff was a Searle Scholar and has received two MERIT awards from the National Institutes of Health. He has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Microbiology, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Amherst College in 1997, and was the inaugural recipient of the Retrovirology Prize in 2005.

Alex Greenwood Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin, Germany; Freie Universitat Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Dr. Alex Greenwood is the head of the Department of Wildlife Diseases of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany. He also holds a faculty position in the Department of Veterinary Medicine as a Professor of Wildlife Diseases at the Freie Universität Berlin. He received his BA in Biology in 1990 from Cornell University and went on to complete his PhD in Human Genetics from University of Michigan- Rackham Graduate School. He completed post-doctoral work at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (1996-1999), American Museum of Natural History (1999-2001) and HelmholtzZentrum München (2001-2006). His honors include his positions as research associate for both the American Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of Natural History.

Thierry Heidmann Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France

Dr. Thierry Heidmann heads the Molecular Physiology and Pathology of Endogenous and Infectious Retroviruses laboratory at the Gustave Roussy Institute in Villejuif, where he has been based since 1985. From 1998 to 2014, he headed the Endogenous retroviruses and retroid elements of higher eukaryotes project. CNRS inventor of six patent portfolios, in 2005 he founded the start-up Viroxis, resulting from the research work of this laboratory. A graduate of the Ecole Normale Superieure de Paris in 1978, he holds a doctoral thesis carried out in the laboratory of Jean-Pierre Changeux at the Institut Pasteur. He is the author of more than 130 publications and winner of several distinctions including the CNRS silver medal (1997), the KT Jeang Retrovirology prize (2009) and the CEA “Science and Innovation” Grand Prize (2014).

Thomas Hohn Friedrich Miescher-Institut, Basel, Switzerland

Thomas Hohn is Professor emeritus at the Botanical Institute, University of Basel. He has studied at the Max-Planck Institute of Tubingen and performed postdoctoral studies in Stanford, California. He was junior group leader at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel and group leader at the Friedrich Miescher-Institut Basel. He began as a professor at Fredrich Miescher Institut for Biomedical Research in 1978 and was inducted as a member of the Academia Europaea in 1989.

Stephen H. Hughes NCI-Frederick, Frederick, Maryland

Dr. Stephen Hughes received his PhD from Harvard University and conducted his post-doctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco. From 1979 to 1984, Dr. Hughes was a Senior Staff Investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 1984, he established the Gene Expression in Eukaryotes Section in the Advance Bioscience Laboratories (ABL) Basic Research Program at National Cancer Institute-Frederick. He became Deputy Director of the ABL-Basic Research Program in 1988 and Director of the Molecular Basis of Carcinogenesis Laboratory in 1995. In 1999, Dr. Hughes joined the HIV Dynamics and Replication Program in the National Cancer Institute and served as Chief of the Retroviral Replication Laboratory from 1999 to 2021. He was appointed Acting Director of the HIV Dynamics and Replication Program in 2005 and served as Director of the HIV Dynamics and Replication Program from 2006 to 2015 and Acting Chief of the Host-Virus Interaction Branch from 2005 to 2021. Dr. Hughes is a Co-Organizer of the Annual HIV Dynamics and Replication Program Conference and the David Derse Memorial Lecture and Award and has served as a Co-Organizer of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Retroviruses and Viral Vectors Meetings, the Annual Meeting on Oncogenes, and the Keystone Symposium on Pathogenesis and Control of Emerging Infections and Drug Resistant Organisms. Dr. Hughes is the recipient of the 2017 Distinguished Research Career Award from the Ohio State University Center for Retrovirus Research in recognition of his substantial body of work on retroviruses.

Welkin E. Johnson Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

Dr. Welkin Johnson is a Professor and Chair of the Biology Department at Boston College. He received his BA in Microbiology and Immunology in 1990 from University of California, Berkeley and went on to receive his PhD in Microbiology and Molecular Biology from Tufts University School of Medicine in 1997. He took up the position of Staff Research Associate at University of California, San Francisco from 1990 to 1991, studying electron microscopy and mouse models of viral infection of the nervous system in the Department of Neuroscience. He spent from 1998 to 2012 at Harvard University Medical School, working his way up from post-doctoral fellow to Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology. After his time at Harvard, he took a position as Associate Professor at Boston College, where he is now a Professor and Department Chair. He has 25 years of experience researching retroviruses (including HIV, SIV and the other AIDS-causing lentiviruses), extensive experience reviewing grants and contracts for the National Institutes of Health, as well as for the University of California AIDS Research Program and a variety of other foundations. He is on the editorial review board of several journals and is currently the Chair of the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses retrovirus section and an academic editor for the journal PLoS One.

Christine A. Kozak National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Bethesda, Maryland

Dr. Kozak received her Ph.D. in biology from Yale University in 1977. After a postdoctoral fellowship at National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease under Dr. Wallace Rowe, she joined the Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology in 1984. In 1992, Dr. Kozak became chief of the Viral Biology Section in Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology. She is an associate editor for several journals, has served on the Committee on Standardized Nomenclature for Mice, was chair of the Mouse Chromosome 5 Committee for 10 years, and has authored more than 400 research publications dealing with mouse retroviruses and mouse genetics.

Alan M. Lambowitz University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas

Dr. Alan Lambowitz is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin in Molecular Biosciences and Oncology. He received his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College in Chemistry in 1968 and began his graduate studies at Yale. He received his PhD from Yale and moved his work to the Johnson Research Foundation at the University of Pennsylvania. During his post-doctoral work, he investigated a common mechanism of oxidative phosphorylation and discovered that the mechanism was incorrect. In 1973, Dr. Lambowitz moved to Rockefeller University and worked with David Luck. After his time at Rockefeller University, he accepted a faculty position at St. Louis University School of Medicine in the Department of Biochemistry. in 1997, Lambowitz moved to Austin, Texas and became the director of The Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology. In 1995, he was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2004, he was named a Fellow of the American Academy for Microbiology and Member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas. He was also awarded the Wilbur Cross Medal by Yale University for his outstanding achievements in scholarship, teaching, academic administration, and public service.

Henry Levin NICHD, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland

Dr. Henry Levin is the head of the Section of Eukaryotic Transposable Elements. He received his PhD from University of California, Berkeley and then was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University with Jef Boeke. Dr. Levin’s studies on the LTR retrotransposons in fission yeast identified mechanistic details of particle formation, reverse transcription, and integration. This research led to innovative methods of DNA sequencing that revealed integration behavior of transposable elements. With these methods the laboratory demonstrated that transposable element integration in fission yeast occurs primarily at promoters resulting in altered gene expression. These sequencing methods were also applied to studies of HIV-1 and provided new insight into the integration behavior of HIV-1. In addition, Dr. Levin develops novel technologies that rely on transposable elements to characterize genetic function genome-wide. Dr. Levin has organized several conferences and symposia on transposon biology and retrovirus replication.

Jeffrey D. Lifson Frederick National Laboratory, Frederick, Maryland

Dr. Jeffrey Lifson received his M.D. from Northwestern University Medical School in 1982, followed by residency and research fellowship training in the Department of Pathology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He became involved in AIDS-related research in 1983, playing a key role in establishing the first program in the United States to try to prevent transfusion-mediated transmission of AIDS through laboratory testing, while also conducting basic in vitro studies of AIDS pathogenesis. After several years of continuing research in AIDS pathogenesis while working in the biotechnology industry, Lifson moved to Leidos Biomedical Research in 1995, establishing the Retroviral Pathogenesis Section within the AIDS Vaccine Program. His work there has focused on the continuing development and application of quantitative virological and immunological methods for understanding retroviral pathogenesis and evaluating approaches for the prevention and treatment of retroviral infection and AIDS. In 2002, Lifson was named the director of the AIDS Vaccine Program, which became the AIDS and Cancer Virus Program in 2008. He is the principal investigator of the Retroviral Pathogenesis Section, and the head of Quantitative Molecular Diagnostics Core.

Maxine L. Linial Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington.

Dr. Maxine Linial is a leader in the study of foamy viruses, a type of virus that infects cats, cows, horses and primates, including monkeys and, more recently, humans. She has led several projects designed to learn more about how foamy viruses replicate, change their genetic structure and jump from monkeys to humans. She got her BS in Bacteriology from Cornell University in 1965 and went on to receive a PhD in Molecular Biology from Tufts University. Maxine Linial is a full member in the division of Basic Sciences at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and also has appointments in the Departments of Microbiology and Global Health at the University of Washington.

Jeremy Luban University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester

Dr. Jeremy Luban received his BS from Purchase College, New York in Biology and Music in 1982. He continued his education at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, earning his MD. During his time at Columbia University, he was a member of Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. After his time as Columbia, he went on to expand his career in a number of ways. Between 1982 and 1983, he was a Research Assistant at The Rockefeller University. He took a position as Resident Physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital in 1987 and stayed there for 2 years. After this, he took a Professorship position at Columbia University. After 16 years as a Professor, he moved his expertise to Switzerland where he acted as a Group Leader at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine. For 4 years, he was Professeur Ordinaire at the University of Geneva. Starting in 2020, he became and Affiliate at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. From 2011 to present, he serves as a Professor of the program in Molecular Medicine and Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Tom Maniatis Columbia University, New York, New York

Tom Maniatis, molecular biologist, is a leader in the field of recombinant DNA. At Vanderbilt University he completed his Ph.D. studying DNA wide-angle scattering. He became a postdoctoral fellow and professor at Harvard University and met Jim Watson just before he became director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. While Maniatis was beginning experimentation with cDNA cloning and gene regulation of higher cells, the controversy over recombinant DNA in Cambridge stunted his progression. Watson offered Maniatis a position at CSHL where he could work more efficiently to understand the methods of recombinant DNA. At CSHL, Maniatis completed full-length synthesis of double stranded DNA and actual cloning of cDNA. He is currently a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University studying the mechanisms involved in the regulation of RNA transcription and pre-messenger RNA splicing. He studies transcription to understand how eukaryotic genes are activated by viral infection and extracellular signals. Dr. Maniatis boasts many awards and honors, including the American Medical Association Scientific Achievement Award in 2000 and the Lasker Award in Medical Science in 2012. He was also elected to the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985, and the US National Academy of Medicine in 2012.

Malcolm Martin NIAID, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland

Dr. Martin received an M.D. from Yale University School of Medicine in 1962 and, following two years of clinical training in internal medicine at the University of Rochester, joined National Institutes of Health as a research associate. He initially investigated the replication and gene regulation of SV40 and polyomaviruses and subsequently studied endogenous murine and human retroviral sequences. Since 1984, his research program has focused on HIV. Dr. Martin was appointed chief of the Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology when it was established in 1981. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1998) and the American Academy of Microbiology (1998) and the recipient of numerous scientific awards. He is on the editorial board for a number of publications, including the Journal of Virology and serves as associate editor for Fields Virology (Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions).

William S. Mason Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Dr. William Mason is a Professor Emeritus at Fox Chase Cancer Center. He received his BS in Mathematics from Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. He went on to pursue his PhD in Biophysics from University of Chicago and completed his post-doctoral research at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He serves as a Scientific and Medical Advisor for the Hepatitis B Foundation and was the meeting organizer in 1987 for the International Hepatitis B Virus Meeting in Cold Spring Harbor, Maine.

Jeffery F. Miller University of California, Los Angeles

Jeffery F. Miller is the Fred Kavli Chair in NanoSystems Sciences, Director of the California NanoSystems Institute, and Professor of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at UCLA. His laboratory focuses on molecular mechanisms of bacterial pathogenesis, the evolution of functional diversity in bacteria and phage, and bio-inspired engineering of precision antibiotics. Dr. Miller received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Tufts University School of Medicine. After postdoctoral training with Dr. Stanley Falkow at Stanford, he joined the faculty at UCLA in 1990. From 2002-2014 he held the M. Philip Davis Chair in Microbiology and Immunology and served as Chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics. In November, 2014, he was appointed Director of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. In 2004, Dr. Miller co-founded AvidBiotics Corp., a biotherapeutics company in South San Francisco. In 2017 AvidBiotics split to form Pylum Biosciences, a precision antibiotics company, and Xyphos Inc., an immuno-oncology company that was acquired by Astellas Pharma in 2019. In 2009 Dr. Miller was appointed to serve on the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. From 2012-2014 he served two consecutive terms as President of the American Society for Microbiology, which represents over 40,000 members in the US and abroad. Dr. Miller is a former Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences, a member of the American Academy of Microbiology, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 2015 he was elected to membership in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Hiroaki Mitsuya National Center for Global Health & Medicine Research Institute, Tokyo, Japan; National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland

Dr. Hiroaki Mitsuya obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. in Kumamoto University School of Medicine in Japan. After receiving immunology/hematology/oncology training at Kumamoto University Hospital, Dr. Mitsuya joined the National Cancer Institute in 1982 and began studying the outcomes of infection by human T cell leukemia virus type 1, the first known human pathogenic retrovirus. In 1984, Dr. Mitsuya steered his attention to human immunodeficiency virus or HIV. In 1985, he identified three nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors now widely used in the treatment of AIDS, and guided much of their preclinical development. Dr. Mitsuya has been chief of the National Cancer Institute’s Experimental Retrovirology Section since 1991. In December, 2006, he was awarded the first National Institutes of Health World AIDS Day Award for his work in developing drugs for AIDS.

Karin Moelling University Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland; Max Planck-Institute Molecular Genetics, Berlin, Germany

Karin Moelling is currently a retired professor, still affiliated with the University of Zurich and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. She studied molecular biology at the University of Berkeley, California. She received her PhD at the Max-Planck-Institute for Virology at Tübingen in Germany. She did two post-doctoral research studies, one at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin (1973-1975), and one at the Institute of Virology, University Giessen. In 1977, she received her Habilitation at the University of Giessen in Biophysics on "Replication of retroviruses". From 1976 to 1981, she was the Head of Independent Research Group at Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, Germany, on oncogenes, proto-oncogenes, cancer and HIV. In 1993, she became the Director of the Institute of Medical Virology (IMV) and Full Professor at University of Zurich in Switzerland; she held this position until 2008. Between 2008 and 2009, she was Fellow of Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin and between 2008 and 2011 she became a Group Leader at Viruses and Cancer at University of Zurich. Her research focuses on retroviruses and cancer, from molecular mechanisms to drug design. She is a Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization. She received several awards such as the SwissAward in 2007 and four prizes: Czerny Prize, Richtzenhain Prize, Meyenburg Prize and Ansman Prize. She was Selected as Heisenberg Fellow in German Science Foundation.

John V. Moran University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Dr. John Moran is a Gilbert S. Omenn Collegiate Professor of Human Genetics and Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School. In 2019, he was honored with Distinguished Faculty Lectureship in Biomedical Research from the University of Michigan Medical School. He received his BS in Chemistry from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1986 and went on to complete his MS in Molecular Genetics from Ohio State University in 1990. In 1994, he attended University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center for his PhD in Biochemistry. from 2008 to 2016, he was an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is currently serving on the American Society of Human Genetics Board of Directors. Dr. Moran has received several awards including the Curt Stern Award from the American Society of Human Genetics (2013), the Basic Science Teaching Award in Human Genetics (2010) and the University of Michigan Henry Russel Award (2003).

Benjamin G. Neel NYU Langone Health, New York, New York

Dr. Benjamin Neel is a professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, as well as the Director of the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center. He received his AB from Cornell University, went on to study at the Rockefeller University for his PhD in viral oncology in 1982, and back to Cornell University for his MD the following year. He began his career at Harvard University, spending 19 years there and working his way up from Assistant Professor of Medicine to William B. Castle Professor of Medicine from 1988 to 2007. In 2007, he left Harvard to take a position at the Ontario Cancer Institute as a Senior Scientist researching division of stem cells and developmental biology until 2014. In 2007, he also served as Director of the Ontario Cancer Institute. In 2014, he co-founded Northern Biologics based out of Toronto where he focused on developing immune-oncology products. From 2015 to present, he serves as Director of the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center. Here, he is responsible for all cancer research and clinical care across NYU Langone Health. In addition to serving on the Association of American Cancer Institutes board, Dr. Neel is an elected member of the Association of American Physicians, a former program chair of the annual meeting and member of the board of directors of American Association for Cancer Research, and a recipient of the Gertrude Elion Award of American Association for Cancer Research and the Premier of Ontario Summit Award.

Vincent Racaniello Columbia University, New York

Dr. Vincent Racaniello attended Cornell University for his BA in Biological Sciences and went on to study at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai for his PhD. His dissertation research was on influenza viruses done in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Palese. He completed his post-doctoral research at MIT in the laboratory of Dr. David Baltimore. Here, he made an infectious DNA clone of the genome of poliovirus, first for an animal virus. In 1982, he took a position as a Professor at Columbia University where he teaches virology to medical students, graduate students and undergraduates. His research revolves around picornaviruses. Dr. Racaniello received the T. Hirschl, Searle Scholars, Eli Lilly, Julius Younger and NIH Merit awards. In the Spring of 2022, ETH Zurich awarded Dr. Racaniello the Richard R. Ernst award and lecture for his scientific communication work. He also served as the 2015 president of the American Society for Virology.

Alan Rein National Cancer Institute, Frederick, Maryland

Dir. Alan Rein obtained his Ph.D. with Dr. Harry Rubin at the University of California at Berkeley and did postdoctoral research as an American Cancer Society Fellow under the direction of Dr. Sheldon Penman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Rein has been associated with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) since 1976 and served as Head of the Retroviral Genetics Section in the ABL-Basic Research Program from 1984 to 1999. In 1999 he joined the HIV Drug Resistance Program (renamed the HIV Dynamics and Replication Program in 2015) as Head of the Retrovirus Assembly Section and was appointed to the NCI Senior Biomedical Research Service. Dr. Rein received the NIH Director's Award in 2012, and in 2014 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. His research has dealt with a number of aspects of the biology and molecular biology of murine and human retroviruses, including virus assembly and maturation, viral envelope function, translational suppression, and pathogenesis.

Douglas Richman University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California

Dr. Douglas Richman is Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Medicine (Active Emeritus). He held the Florence Seeley Riford Chair in AIDS Research until going Active Emeritus in 2019. He currently is actively maintaining a research laboratory, is Director of the University of California, San Diego HIV Institute, and Co-Director of the San Diego Center for AIDS Research. Dr. Richman is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Association of Physicians, and the Infectious Disease Society of America. Dr. Richman received his AB from Dartmouth College and his MD at Stanford University, where he completed his residency. He also received an honorary Doctorate in Medicine from the University of Lausanne. He was a Research Associate in the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Clinical Fellow in the Division of Infectious Diseases, at both Beth Israel Hospital and Children's Hospital Medical Center of Harvard. He trained as both an infectious disease physician and medical virologist at Stanford, the NIH, and Harvard before joining the faculty at the University of California, San Diego in 1976.

Stefan G. Sarafianos Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia

Dr. Stefan Sarafianos is a Nahmias-Schinazi Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics at Emory University as well as an Adjunct Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at University of Missouri. He also serves as the Associate Director of Pediatrics at Emory University. He received his BS from the University of Patras in Patras, Greece and went on to complete his PhD from Georgetown University in 1992. Between 1995 and 2006, he held a position as Research Associate Professor at Rutgers University. In 2006, he took a position as Professor at the University of Missouri Medical School teaching in the Departments of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology as well as Biochemistry. He also was an investigator at the Bond Life Science Center. In 2013, he was the Chancellor’s Excellence Chair in Molecular Virology at University of Missouri Medical School. In 2017, he moved to the Emory University School of Medicine where he remains currently. His research works towards unraveling the molecular details of how biomedically-relevant enzymes function, how they are inhibited, how they develop drug resistance and towards developing drugs that will treat human disease by novel mechanisms of action.

John M. Sedivy Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

Dr. John Sedivy joined the Brown Faculty in 1996 and is a Hermon C. Bumpus Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry. He also serves as Associate Dean and Director for the Center for the Biology of Aging. He obtained his PhD from Harvard in 1985, and subsequently trained with the Nobel Laureate Philip Sharp at the MIT Center for Cancer Research. He started his independent research career at Yale University in 1988. In addition to writing the first comprehensive book on gene targeting in 1992, John Sedivy has published over 140 original articles. He has served on numerous study sections and advisory committees at the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society, and the US Army Breast Cancer Initiative. He maintains an active role in the field of aging, as a founding member (and current chair) of the Cellular Mechanisms in Aging and Development study section at the National Institutes of Health, co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Aging Cell, and chair of the 2015 Gordon Research Conference on the Biology of Aging. He has fulfilled major administrative leadership roles at Brown University, including chairing the Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry, and founding an academic center for Genomics and Proteomics.

Anna Marie Skalka Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Dr. Anna Marie Skalka is a virologist, molecular biologist and geneticist who is a Professor Emeritus and serves as Senior Advisor to the President at the Fox Chase Cancer Center. She spent her time as an undergraduate student at Adelphi University studying biology which sparked her interest in molecular genetics. She went on to earn her doctorate in microbiology from New York University Medical School. She is internationally recognized for her contributions to understanding how retroviruses replicate and insert their genetic material into the hose genome. She conducted her post-doctoral research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory from 1964 to 1969 before being invited to be a part of the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology where she started as a junior member and was eventually promoted to the chair of the Department of Molecular Oncology. She was recruited to Fox Chase Cancer Center in 1987 as director of the Institute for Cancer Research. She served as senior vice president for basic science at Fox Chase from 1987 to 2008 and is also the former W.W. Smith Chair in Cancer Research.

Bruce Stillman Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Jonathan Stoye Francis Crick Institute, London, United Kingdom

Dr. Jonathan Stoye is a Senior Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London, England. He received his BA in Natural Sciences in 1973 from University of Cambridge, UK and went on to serve as a research assistant at Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland before returning to school to obtain his PhD in Microbiology from University of Basel in 1981. From 1982 to 1989, he was a Research Associate at Tufts University Medical School in Boston. Massachusetts. He went on to become a team leader at the MRC-National Institute for Medical Research in London, England until 2001 when he was promoted to Head of Division. He held that post until 2015, when he took up the position he currently holds at the Francis Crick Institute where he studies the ‘arms race’ between viruses and their hosts to find better ways of treating viral infections such as HIV. Dr. Stoye was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2017.

John Taylor Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Dr. John Taylor received his BS in Physics from the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia and went on to receive his MS in Nuclear Physics from the same institution. In 1968, he obtained his PhD in Cell Biology from University of Toronto, Canada. He is a member of the American Academy of Microbiology and is the recipient of many awards. Some of these awards include the Senior Dernham Fellowship from the American Cancer Society, California Division, between 1971-1974 and the Senior Award from the Fulbright-Hays Program from 1970-1973. He was a post-doctoral fellow between 1968 and 1970 at the Australian Research Grants Committee. His research interests follow into hepatitis delta virus and its helper, hepatitis B virus.

Alice Telesnitsky University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Dr. Alice Telesnitsky received her BS in Genetics from University of California, David in 1979. She took time off from her schooling to spend time in Japan and work in biotech where she was a research assistant at Genentech. In 1983, she began her studies at University of California, Berkeley in Biochemistry for her PhD. In July 1994, she took a position as Professor at University of Michigan, where she still works and researches in her own lab.

Besides the Microbiology and Immunology Department, she is a member of a number of centers and training programs at Michigan, such as Cellular and Molecular Biology and the Cellular biotechnology Training Program. She has been part of the University of Michigan Cancer Center for many years and is the Director of the Center for HIV RNA Studies, an NIH-Supported multidisciplinary collaboration among over 20 research groups interested in studying aspects of the HIV replication cycle that involve RNA. In addition to performing cutting edge interdisciplinary work on RNA structure, function, and dynamics in an area of high biomedical significance (HIV/AIDS), a priority of the Center is on training the next generation of biomedical scientists.

Sarah Temin unaffiliated

Sarah Temin received her BA from University of Wisconsin-Madison and went on to receive her MSPH from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She began her career in 1990 at the Glaucoma Research Foundation where she worked as a Program Manager until 1994. In 2004, she began working as a Program Manager and Analyst at the Lung Cancer Alliance. She stayed there until 2006, when she got her current job as a Senior Guidelines Specialist for the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Alexandria, Virginia.

Harold Varmus Meyer Cancer Center, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, New York

Dr. Harold Varmus is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who was director of the National Institutes of Health from 1993 to 1999 and the 14th Director of the National Cancer Institute from 2010 to 2015, a post to which he was appointed by then-President Barack Obama. He was the recipient of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes. He is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and a senior associate at the New York Genome Center. He graduated from Amherst College with a BA in English literature. He earned a graduate degree from Harvard in English in 1962 before switching disciplines and beginning his journey as a medical doctor. He attended Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and later worked at a missionary hospital in Bareilly, India. Dr. Varmus joined the Public Health Service at the National Institutes of Health in 1968. In 1970, he began his post-doctoral research in the Bishop’s lab at University of California, San Francisco.

Peter K. Vogt Scripps Research, La Jolla, California

Dr. Peter Vogt, M.D., Ph.D., serves as Member of Scientific Advisory Board of Onconova Therapeutics, Inc. Dr. Vogt is at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, CA. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Lasker Award winner. His fundamental studies on oncogenic avian retroviruses led to the identification of oncogenes in human cells. Dr. Vogt is the editor-in-chief of Virology, a scientific journal. Dr. Peter Vogt intends to continue his work at the Scripps Research Institute. He is currently working to generate small molecule inhibitors that interfere with the spread of cancer as a new therapeutic approach.

Robert A. Weinberg Whitehead Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Robert Weinberg is Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research and director of the Ludwig Cancer Center at MIT, an American Cancer Society Research Professor, and is a founding member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. In 1982 he was one of the scientists to discover the first human oncogene, Ras, which causes normal cells to form tumors, and his lab also isolated the first known tumor suppressor gene, Rb. He co-authored with Douglas Hanahan the landmark "Hallmarks of Cancer" paper in 2000, which laid out the six requirements for a healthy cell to become cancerous.

Robin A. Weiss University College London, London, United Kingdom

Robin Weiss is a molecular biologist, Professor of Viral Oncology at University College London and a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. Before becoming a professor at University College London, Dr. Weiss was a Director at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, from 1980 to 1989, after which he continued as Director of Research for another nine years. Until 2005, he was Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Cancer. In 1977, he was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1997, and in 1999 h became an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians. In 2001, he was awarded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences the M.W. Beijerinck Prize for Virology, noting especially his work on retroviruses. In 2007, imperial College London awarded Dr. Weiss the Ernst Chain Prize, stating that he has pioneered our understanding of HIV and AIDS, particularly on the identification of CD4 as the HIV receptor and on the analysis of neutralizing antibodies to the virus. In 2009, he was elected as Honorary Member of the Microbiology Society. He is also a member of the European Academy of Microbiology. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.