David H. Walker, MD, Carmage and Martha Walls Distinguished Chair in Tropical Diseases, and professor and chair of UTMB’s Department of Pathology, is executive director of the CBEID. Dr. Walker has a long and distinguished career as an independent NIH-funded scientist. His research on rickettsial and ehrlichial molecular microbiology, immunity, pathology, pathogenesis, clinical pathophysiology, epidemiology, and diagnosis has included important contributions to elucidating the protective immune mechanisms against rickettsiae and ehrlichiae, the discovery and characterization of agents of emerging infectious diseases, description of new diseases, and contributions to the descriptions of the pathology of Lassa fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, boutonneuse fever, and human monocytotropic ehrlichiosis. His investigation of the 1979 outbreak of anthrax in Sverdlovsk, Russia revealed it to have been inhalational anthrax. His field research projects and training of international scientists have ranged from China, Inner Mongolia, Sicily, Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Slovenia, and Japan to Cameroon. Dr. Walker is the Principal Investigator of the Western Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research. This five-year, $50 million NIH grant supports research at over 17 different agents from NIAID’s Category A-C priority pathogen list.
Director for Biodefense is C.J. Peters, MD, UTMB professor and holder of the John Sealy Distinguished University Chair in Tropical and Emerging Virology. Prior to joining UTMB, Dr. Peters had been chief of the Special Pathogens Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta since 1992 and had directed research at federal Biosafety Level 4 laboratories, including the lab at the CDC and another at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Md. Dr. Peters has traveled widely in South America and Africa investigating viral outbreaks. The native Texan played a key role in tracking down the hantavirus that caused mysterious deaths in New Mexico. He also battled a 1989 lethal Ebola virus outbreak among monkeys at a Reston, Va, biomedical supply company and is author, with Mark Olshaker, of the 1997 book, Virus Hunter: Thirty Years of Battling Hot Viruses Around the World.
Director for Tropical and Emerging Infectious Diseases is Scott C. Weaver, PhD, professor in the departments of Pathology and Microbiology and Immunology. Dr. Weaver specializes in the epidemiology, evolution and pathogenesis of viruses spread by biting insects, including Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE) and dengue viruses, and in developing vaccines for these viruses and evaluating vaccines effective against them in laboratory animals. He also is working to shed light on how and why innate immunity often protects so-called “reservoir hosts”—those wild animals that serve as the reservoir for perpetuation of viruses communicated from lower animals to humans under natural conditions—from severe disease. He also is collaborating with others in the center on new vaccines for VEE as well as eastern (EEE) and western equine encephalitis (WEE) viruses, and on antiviral drugs targeted against VEE virus assembly and replication. He has traveled and worked widely in Latin America and is particularly interested in the effects of deforestation on the ecology and in the epidemiology of several viral diseases spread by biting insects in the Amazon basin of Peru.
The Associate Director for the CBEID is Kimberly Schuenke, PhD. Dr. Schuenke promotes the activities of biodefense and infectious disease faculty at the University of Texas Medical Branch and provides administrative support for the Robert E. Shope, MD, Laboratory in the John Sealy Pavilion for Infectious Diseases Research (the biosafety level 4 laboratory). Dr. Schuenke currently serves as the program administrator for the Western Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research (WRCE), a 5-year, $50 million grant that is used to develop novel vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics against biothreat agents and emerging infectious diseases. The WRCE is one of ten such centers in the nation, and combines the energy, creativity, and resources of over 30 institutions in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Dr. Schuenke has over 20 years’ experience as a bench scientist working with infectious agents, including rickettsia and HIV.