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Professor of Medicine/Director of Research, Department of Medicine
University of Connecticut
Health
Avon, CT, United States
I received my BS from Yale University in 1975 and my MD from the University of California, San Francisco in 1979. From 1979 to 1982, I trained in internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. From 1982 to 1984, I trained in adult Infectious Diseases at UCLA. From 1984 to 1986 I completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA studying syphilis pathogenesis. In 1986 I joined the faculty of UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, TX, rising to the level of Professor with tenure in the Departments of Internal Medicine and Microbiology and relocated to the University of Connecticut Health Center (now UConn Health) in 1999 as Founding Director of the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis. I am currently Director of Research in the Department of Medicine, UConn Health, and Senior Scientific Advisor to Connecticut Children’s and the Connecticut Children’s Research Institute. I have appointments as Professor with tenure in the Departments of Medicine, Pediatrics, Molecular Biology and Biophysics, Genetics and Genome Sciences, and Immunology.
I have been engaged in spirochete research since 1983 and have been funded continuously by the NIH since 1989. I have authored or co-authored 209 peer-reviewed papers and 48 chapters, reviews, and commentaries. I also have edited three comprehensive reference books: Pathogenic Treponema (2006), Borrelia: Molecular Biology, Host Interaction and Pathogenesis (2010), and Lyme Disease and Relapsing Fever Spirochetes: Genomics, Molecular Biology, Host Interactions, and Disease Pathogenesis (2021) in which I also authored chapters. I received a NIH/NIAID Merit Award in 2002 for my syphilis research and was elected Vice-Chair and Chair of the 2014 and 2016 biannual Gordon Research Conferences on the Biology of Spirochetes, the premier basic science meeting in the spirochete field. My basic research interests in spirochetology are broad and include (i) ultrastructure, composition, and molecular architecture of Treponema pallidum, Borrelia burgdorferi, and Treponema denticola; (ii) topology, structure, and function of T. pallidum, B. burgdorferi, and T. denticola outer membrane proteins and transporters; (iii) gene expression, gene regulation, and metabolism in B. burgdorferi; and (iv) immunobiology of syphilis and Lyme disease, and (v) vaccine development for syphilis. My clinical expertise in syphilis and Lyme disease is also well recognized.
I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.
Thursday, October 20, 2022
3:15 PM – 4:30 PM US ET
Thursday, October 20, 2022
3:15 PM – 3:40 PM US ET