Robert Davey joined UTMB in 2000, coming from Harvard Medical School in
Boston, where he was an instructor in medicine. Presently, he is an
Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and
a member of the Galveston National
Laboratory as well as the Institute of Human Infection and
Immunity. His work has been focused on identification of cellular
factors important for establishing infection by retroviruses and more
recently, filoviruses. He is trained to work at
BSL4 and operates a multidiscipline laboratory applying modern
molecular techniques to these little studied pathogens. This has
culminated in a deeper understanding of the entry and cell signaling
pathways that are used by viruses to penetrate
the cell membrane and establish infection. His work as been
published in Nature and Science and more recently, work with the BSL4
agent, Ebolavirus, has been published in the high-impact journal PLoS
pathogens. Other work of note is his study
in 2009, on the use of siRNA to identify host factors important
for Ebolavirus infection and drug discovery, which appeared in Drug
Development Research and has been cited in the popular literature. His
current work has expanded into other BSL4
pathogens including, but not limited to, the arenaviruses (Junin
and Lassa fever virus) as well as bunyaviruses and aims to identify new
therapeutics for these pathogens.