Core A: Administrative Core

Core Lead: Alexander Bukreyev, PhD (University of Texas Medical Branch)
Associate Core Lead: Mariano Garcia-Blanco, MD, PhD (University of Virginia)
Program Administrator: Sherry Haller, PhD (University of Texas Medical Branch)
Consultant: Ian Crozier, MD (NIH/NIAID)
Biostatistician: Moumita Chakraborty, PhD (University of Texas Medical Branch)

Core A

The Administrative Core is responsible for the strategic planning, overall management, and coordination of the Program Project (P01) “Molecular Mechanisms of the Dysregulated Immune Response to Ebola Virus”. It provides governance, financial oversight, and operational management functions to facilitate the execution of the overall research plan, thereby enabling the Program to fulfill its mission to characterize the transcriptional, posttranscriptional, and posttranslational mechanisms following Ebola virus infection that lead to the dysregulated immune response. The Administrative Core will provide an organizational and programmatic structure to promote research productivity and synergy through scientific interactions. The Core will provide oversight in setting priorities, including decision-making processes involving the continual evaluation of research by the PIs and an advisory board. Core personnel will ensure that the Program includes biostatistical rigor and is compliant with issues involving the use of vertebrate animals, select agents, and BSL-4 facilities, and will ensure that regulatory expertise is available for future product development activities. Management activities are carried out with the advice of the External Advisory Committee in close collaboration with Core leadership.

The P01 Research Program Project is administratively housed and supported by the Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases at UTMB.

Alexander Bukreyev

Dr. Bukreyev is a Professor in the Department of Pathology at UTMB. He leads an extensive team of researchers conducting work in infectious diseases including, among others, Ebola, Lassa, and SarsCov2. Dr. Bukreyev has participated and lead multiple NIH and industry funded research programs including R01, U19, and P funding mechanisms.

Mariano Garcia-Blanco

Dr. Garcia-Blanco is the F. Palmer Weber Medical Research Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology, University of Virginia. He has experience in the management of large multi-group grants and organizations. He has participated in two large MPI R01 projects (R01AI089526 and R01AI101431) leading one of these, and for several years was Co-Director of the NCI-designated Research Program in Molecular Genetics and Genomics of the Duke Cancer Institute an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center (P30CA014236). He served as a member of the scientific advisory board of the European Alternative Splicing Network (EURASNET), a large EU grant, and helped this group guide their program for five years. He has also served as member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the NIGMS HIV/AIDS Structure Program. He was the Director of the Duke Center for RNA Biology from 2006 to 2014. In 2006, he became the founding member of the Emerging Infectious Diseases Programme at Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, led the searches that identified the two directors the program has had since its inception, and was a principal in the building of the program and recruitment of its faculty. From 2014 to 2022 he was Professor and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UTMB.

Sherry Haller

Dr. Haller is the Associate Director for the Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases (CBEID) at the University of Texas Medical Branch. She will serve as the Program Administrator and will be responsible for overseeing the day-today operations of the P01, including interactions with all Project and Core Leads. Dr. Haller is responsible for keeping track of required information regarding compliance issues (e.g., vertebrate animals, select agent registrations). She will participate in site visits, arrange annual meetings, coordinate travels of the PIs and EAC, coordinate the annual progress report, and will work closely with the PIs, Project/Core Leads, and other administrative team members to see that all aspects of the Program Project are running smoothly. Her extensive administrative experience has enabled her to acquire experience and skills that are critical for performing her role as the Program Administrator.

Ian Crozier

Dr. Crozier is a Medical Affairs Scientist at the Frederick National Laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland. From this position, he supports the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) at Fort Detrick in a position designed to be bidirectionally agile between the human bedside and in vitro/animal model investigation of host–filoviral (and other high-threat pathogen) interactions.

He trained as an internal medicine and infectious diseases clinician, then had a long post-training experience instructing African clinicians and providing clinical care at the bedsides of patients with HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and other tropical infectious diseases in Uganda. In August 2014, early in the Western African EVD outbreak, his clinical experience was jump-started when he was deployed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to an under-resourced, overwhelmed Ebola Treatment Unit in Kenema, Sierra Leone. It was very clear that despite four decades of attention to this pathogen, they needed to understand more about the human–Ebola virus interaction to improve patient outcomes in these settings. Continuing deployments to affected areas, as recently as the Côte d'Ivoire outbreak in March 2021, Dr. Crozier brings valuable clinical treatment experience to the research team.

Moumita Chakraborty

Dr. Chakraborty is an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics in the UTMB Office of Biostatistics, and her research is focused on statistical modeling and analysis of complex, multi-platform data arising from various biological real-life problems. She will provide expertise regarding the statistical design and input related to power calculations for the research projects and cores, including providing statistical assistance and advice for analyzing the OMICS experiments (Cores C and D) and the experiments involving animals (Core B). Dr. Chakraborty will work closely with Drs. Bukreyev and Garcia-Blanco to ensure statistical rigor is applied to all experiments, especially in vivo experiments.