Advisory Board and Editors Infectious Diseases
James Harris
Group Leader in Arthritis and Lupus Research Group, Department of Medicine, Monash University. Interests in cytokine biology, inflammasomes, MIF, autophagy, inflammation, innate immunity, veterinary and comparative immunology.
Deputy Editor, Immunology and Cell Biology.
Review Editor, Frontiers in Immunology.
Editorial Board member, Arthritis Research & Therapy.
Elizabeth Hemming-Schroeder
Dr. Hemming-Schroeder is an Assistant Professor and member of the Center for Vector-borne Infectious Diseases. Dr. Hemming-Schroeder's research training includes the study of malaria, a disease that affects nearly half of the world's population, as well as tick-borne diseases in the United States. Her research primarily uses methods in molecular biology, population genetics, and bioinformatics to study vector-borne disease ecology and epidemiology. She is broadly interested in how ecological factors, environmental modifications, and public health interventions impact pathogen and vector population dynamics and how genetic and epidemiological information on pathogens and vectors can be used to improve infectious disease control and elimination.
Laura Hertel
Principal Investigator, Center for Immunobiology and Vaccine Development, Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, California, USA. Formerly Assistant Professor in Molecular Virology, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Western Ontario, Ontario, Canada.
Grant A Hill-Cawthorne
Senior Lecturer in Communicable Disease Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Sydney; Public Health Lead and Node Leader for Mass Gathering Medicine, Marie Bashir Institute, University of Sydney; Honorary Life Fellow, St Andrew's College within the University of Sydney; Senior Member and College Research Associate, Wolfson College, University of Cambridge
Biographical details:
I studied medicine in Cambridge and during my junior doctor years was very interested in both neurology and infectious diseases. Clinically I specialised in medical microbiology, keeping a particular interest in neurological infections. For the past 3 years I have been in Saudi Arabia developing a pathogen genomics laboratory where I have gained first-hand experience of second generation sequencing and bioinformatics.
Research interests:
Infectious diseases and medical microbiology are undergoing the most significant shift since PCR was introduced. By the end of this decade, sequencing will have become the main option when investigating any outbreak or infection. I study the interface between genomics as a pure science and its translation into clinical and public health benefits.
At present I am examining the worldwide genomics of tuberculosis, the use of sequencing to characterise MRSA strains and the genomic variations in BCG vaccine strains used around the globe.
Branka Horvat
MD PhD,
Head of the team Immunobiology of Viral Infection;
Research in the field of interaction between the virus and the immune system
Altijana Hromić-Jahjefendić
Dr. Altijana Hromić-Jahjefendić is an associate professor at the Genetics and Bioengineering Department at International University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She obtained her bachelor's degree in chemistry and master's degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biomedicine at Graz University of Technology, Austria. After that she worked for Austrian Center of Industrial Biotechnology and continued to pursue her PhD degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biomedicine with the focus on Structural biology. Since 2018. she works as professor at International University of Sarajevo at the Genetics and Bioengineering Department. She authored many scientific publications with international colleagues in the field of COVID-19 and cancer research.
Lei Huang
Dr. Lei Huang is a cancer epidemiologist, translational oncologist, digestive surgeon, surgical oncologist, and gastroenterologist. He has published about 50 papers in SCI(E)-indexed journals including Gut, Annals of Surgery, BMC Medicine, JAMA Surgery, Clinical Cancer Research, Cancer Immunology Research, International Journal of Cancer, EBioMedicine, and Gastric Cancer. His works have been cited for about 1000 times.
Dr. Huang has served on the editorial board of Frontiers in Oncology, World Journal of Gastrointestinal Oncology, PeerJ, Medicine, and Translational Cancer Research, and Frontiers in Surgery. He has been peer reviewer for about 50 SCI(E)-indexed journals including Annals of Internal Medicine, Annals of Surgery, Clinical Cancer Research, Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network-JNCCN, Cancer Letters, Oncoimmunology, and Oncologist. He was selected as Best Reviewer for Annals of Internal Medicine twice in 2017 and 2019.
Dr. Huang has been invited to give oral presentations in the ASCO Annual Meeting and International Gastric Cancer Congress (IGCC), and has received Merit Awards in the ESMO Annual Meeting and Awards for Young Investigators in the IGCC.
His research interests majorly cover the epidemiological, clinical, and translational aspects of digestive cancers. He has successfully coordinated several large international investigations with participants from the US and about 20 European countries.
Md Asiful Islam
Dr Asiful is currently working as a research fellow at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Women’s Health, Institute of Metabolism and Systems Research, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK.
Dr Md Asiful Islam completed his PhD (Fast Track, Passed with Grade 1, Pass without correction) in Genetics & Autoimmunity from Human Genome Centre, Universiti Sains Malaysia (November 2018) under Professor Dr Siew Hua Gan following completing BSc in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh). He achieved Malaysia International Scholarship and USM Vice-Chancellor Award during his PhD and working as a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Haematology, School of Medical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia from 2019 till 2022.
Besides PeerJ, he has been working as an Academic Editor for Nature Scientific Data, PLOS ONE, BMC Rheumatology, Autoimmunity Highlights, Endocrine, Metabolic & Immune Disorders - Drug Targets, Current Immunology Reviews and Current Rheumatology Reviews.
Dr Asiful's research interest covers different research areas of Medical Sciences including Haematology, Immunology, Pharmacology, Molecular Genetics and Neurosciences. He is currently focused on developing and executing systematic reviews and meta-analyses decoding various research questions of Medical Sciences.
Christine Josenhans
Christine Josenhans is Professor for Microbiology and Medical Microbiology at Max von Pettenkofer Institute of Ludwig Maximilians University Munich and an infectious disease specialist. Until 2017, she was Associate Professor at Hannover Medical School, Germany, also in the field of infection research and molecular and cellular microbiology. Her research foci are on infectious disease agents in general, with specialization in microbiology, biochemistry, immunology, and host-pathogen interactions. She performed her Post-doctoral studies on Yersinia host-pathogen interactions, more specifically on their type III secretion system pore proteins. Current research foci are in persistent bacterial and viral infections, host-pathogen crosstalk and immune interference, as well as in the causal link between infections and cancer.
She is on the board of several undergraduate and graduate teaching programs.
Nancy P. Keller
Professor of Medical Microbiology and Immunology/Bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin, Editor of Fungal Biology and Genetics, American Phytopathological Society Fellow and American Academy of Microbiology Fellow
Kathleen A Kelly
Kathleen Kelly is a Professor who joined the Department of Pathlogy and Lab Medicine in 1999. Dr. Kelly earned her B.S. in Medical Technology and PhD in Immunology at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, where she worked on the role of T cell subsets in germinal center formation. She then served as a junior faculty member in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. She focused on mucosal immunology and concentrated her studies on immune responses in the reproductive tract.
Dr. Kelly is actively involved in graduate, undergraduate and medical student education. She is a recipient of the Young Scientist Award and past chair of the Immunology Division for the American Society of Microbiology.
Hossein Khiabanian
Hossein is an Associate Professor of Pathology in the Division of Medical Informatics at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. His group develops novel analytical methods to understand the underlying genetics of human diseases and the molecular epidemiology of disease-causing organisms using high-throughput genomic data. The group is especially interested in studying tumor clonal evolution, and identifying prognostic markers in cancer, particularly in hematological malignancies. Hossein received his Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University, where he studied galaxy clusters and dark matter structures, using weak gravitational lensing. Prior to joining Rutgers, he was a member of the faculty in the Department Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University.