Norman P. Salzman Memorial Symposium and Awards in Basic and Clinical Virology

Ashish Kumar, Ph.D.
Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, NIAID, NIH

Dr. Ashish Kumar is a visiting post-doctoral fellow at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, where he works under the supervision of senior investigator Dr. Joseph Marcotrigiano. In 2008, he received his MS in biotechnology from the University of Jammu, India, and was awarded his Ph.D. in 2014 from the National Institute of Immunology (NII), New Delhi, India. He moved to the United States in 2016 and began working at the National Institutes of Health in early 2018. His current work is on the hepatitis C virus (HCV), and he has solved the first crystal structure of one of the HCV surface glycoproteins (E2)-host cell receptor (CD81) complex. His subsequent Research focuses on elucidating receptor binding and entry mechanisms and helping in the development of an effective HCV vaccine. In the long term, Dr. Kumar aims to lead an independent Research group and will Research to understand the viral and cellular proteins that are important for flaviviruses for assembly, entry, and maturation into the host cells and to work on vaccine development.

Shanna Leventhal
Disease Modeling and Transmission Section, Laboratory of Virology, NIAID, NIH

Shanna graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2018 with a dual degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology with Honors and Public Health. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. through the NIH and University of Montana, Missoula, under Heinz Feldmann and David Hawman. Her graduate work focuses on the serious human pathogen, Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever Virus (CCHFV). She is working to elucidate the mechanisms of CCHFV pathogenesis through a mouse adapted CCHFV disease model. This model contains multiple adaptive mutations which Shanna is using as a tool to understand how CCHFV interacts with the immune system to cause disease. This Research will give key insight into human CCHF disease development and thus inform the types of interventions needed to improve disease outcome. In addition, she is working to develop vaccines against CCHFV, in particular, a novel replicating RNA vaccine platform that she has shown to have robust efficacy in a mouse model. She continues to investigate the mechanisms by which this vaccine confers protection, and her findings indicate a potential role for the viral nucleoprotein in disease as, surprisingly, non-neutralizing antibodies against this protein are protective against viral challenge. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, Shanna also supported multiple vaccine studies, one of which has advanced into clinical trials.

Joseph Marcotrigiano, Ph.D.
Senior Investigator, Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, NIAID, NIH

Heinz Feldmann, Ph.D.
Chief, Laboratory of Virology, Chief Scientist, RML BSL4 Laboratories, NIAID, NIH