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Associate Professor
University of Washington
Disclosure(s): Cepheid: Reagents; Ellume: Advisor/Consultant; Gates Ventures: Grant/Research Support; Merck: Advisor/Consultant; Pfizer: Advisor/Consultant
Dr. Chu is Associate Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology, and Global Health at the University of Washington. She studies respiratory viruses and vaccines, and has conducted clinical trials of vaccines and therapeutics, including studies of diagnostics and treatment for influenza and SARS-CoV-2, and clinical trials of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza vaccines in the US and Nepal. She has also conducted several studies in south Asia to understand the correlates of protection against RSV disease in pregnant women and infants. As part of the Seattle Flu Study, she developed a prototype pandemic preparedness platform in a major metropolitan region. As part of this study, she developed strategies to conduct home-based surveillance studies for respiratory viruses, remote home-based antiviral delivery and administration, and genomic studies to map transmission of respiratory pathogens in families with young children and the sheltered homeless. This study first identified COVID-19 community transmission in the United States. She currently is the site principal investigator for a NIH-funded study of long COVID, and principal investigator of a CDC-funded study of SARS-CoV-2 population vaccine effectiveness study in children and adults. Early in the pandemic, she established a cohort of convalescent individuals with SARS-CoV-2 and has followed this group for over two years to understand vaccine and infection-induced immunity, particularly against novel variants, and the risk factors that predict long COVID. Her continued research interests are in studies of maternal immunization against respiratory viruses, longitudinal cohort studies of long COVID, and studies using molecular epidemiology to map transmission of respiratory viruses in community settings.