Editors for Microbiology and Infectious Disease

We aim to publish studies that provide new insights into fundamental mechanisms, and cell growth and metabolism, in all microbes. We also welcome studies of all types of interactions between microorganisms in communities and between microbes and multicellular organisms, in both pathogenic and commensal interactions, including but not limited to investigations into the microbiome, microbial ecology, mycology, pathology, parasitology, and virology. Read the latest research in this subject area.
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Senior editors

  1. Neil Ferguson

    Imperial College London, United Kingdom

    Neil Ferguson is Head of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London, where he leads the MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling. His research aims to improve the understanding of epidemiological factors and population processes that shape infectious disease spread in human and animal populations. A practical focus of his work is the analysis and optimisation of intervention strategies that are aimed at reducing transmission or disease burden.

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    epidemiology and infectious disease
    emerging infections
    mosquito-borne infections
    statistical and mathematical tools

  2. Eduardo Franco

    McGill University, Canada

    Eduardo Franco is Professor and Chairman, Department of Oncology, and Director, Division of Cancer Epidemiology, McGill University, Montreal. He holds BSc (1975) and Licentiate (1976) degrees in biology from Universidade de Campinas, Brazil, and master's (MPH) and doctoral (DrPH) degrees in public health microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1981-84). He was a Guest Researcher at the US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta (1980-81 and 1983-84), and a post-doctoral fellow in cancer epidemiology during 1984 at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, at the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, and at Louisiana State University, in New Orleans. Since 1985, he has conducted epidemiologic research on the causes of cancer and on the means to prevent it or to improve patient survival. He is mostly known for his contributions to our understanding of human papillomavirus infection as the cause of cervical cancer and using this knowledge to prevent this cancer via vaccination and improved screening strategies. He received the Canadian Cancer Research Alliance’s Distinguished Service to Cancer Research Award, Lifetime Achievement Awards from the American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology and from the International Papillomavirus Society, the Women in US Government’s Leadership Award, the Canadian Cancer Society’s Warwick Prize, the Geoffrey Howe Outstanding Contribution Award from the Canadian Society for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, the University of British Columbia’s Chew Wei Memorial Prize in Cancer Research, and the McLaughlin-Gallie Award from the Royal College of Physicians of Canada. He has mentored 115 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, and 30 undergraduate trainees. He is Officer of the Order of Canada and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Heholds an honorary doctorate from Universidade Fernando Pessoa, Porto, Portugal.

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Cancer Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    molecular epidemiology and prevention of cervical cancer and human papillomavirus-associated diseases
    cancers of the upper aero-digestive tract
    prostate, endometrium, and childhood tumours
    efficacy of cancer screening strategies
    the impact of measurement error in epidemiology
    societal and clinical influences on cancer patient survival
    Competing interests statement
    Entire research program funded by the Medical Research Council of Canada (until 1999), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) (1999-present), National Institutes of Health, Canadian Cancer Society, and Cancer Research Society. He has received salary awards from the Fonds de Recherche Quebec Santé and CIHR. He holds a James McGill Professorship and the Minda de Gunzburg Endowed Chair at McGill University. He serves as Editor-in-Chief for Preventive Medicine and Preventive Medicine Reports and serves on the editorial boards of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, International Journal of Cancer, Papillomavirus Research, and Salud Publica de Mexico. He has served as occasional consultant to companies involved with HPV vaccination (Merck and GSK) and HPV diagnostics (Roche, Abbott, Qiagen, and BD).
  3. Wendy S Garrett

    Wendy S Garrett

    Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, United States

    Wendy Garrett is the Melvin J and Geraldine L. Glimcher Associate Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute. Her work explores host-microbiota interactions underlying mucosal immune homeostasis, gastrointestinal inflammatory disorders, and cancer. She graduated from the Yale College; received her MD PhD from Yale University and completed post-graduate training at Harvard.

    Expertise
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Human Biology and Medicine
    Research focus
    host-microbiota interactions
    microbiome
    mucosal immunology
    Competing interests statement
    Wendy Garrett receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, Hoffman-LaRoche, and Groupe Danone. She is a member of the Cell Reports and Journal of Clinical Microbiology editorial boards. She consults for Janssen and serves on the scientific advisory boards of Synlogic and Evelo Biosciences.

  4. Karla Kirkegaard

    Stanford University School of Medicine, United States

    Karla Kirkegaard is the Violetta L Horton Research Professor of Genetics and former Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the Stanford University School of Medicine. She received her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with James C Wang at Harvard University, and performed her postdoctoral work in the laboratory of David Baltimore at the Whitehead Institute. As an Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder, she received numerous awards, including a fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, an American Cancer Society Young Investigator Award, a Searle Scholar Award, and sponsorship by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Karla Kirkegaard combined her interests in biochemistry, cell biology, and genetics in the study of RNA virology, using poliovirus and other positive-strand RNA viruses to understand the cell biology of viral infections and the genetics of viral variability. Since her move to Stanford University School of Medicine in 1996, her interests have focused increasingly on the impact of basic science discoveries on the transmission of viruses in infected hosts. Kirkegaard’s honors include an Ellison Foundation Senior Scholar Award in Global Infectious Disease and, in 2006, the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, for her approach to guide the selection of antiviral targets with the goal of suppressing the drug-resistant RNA genomes that will inevitably be formed due to the high error rates of RNA replication. She has been recently elected as a Member of the National Academies of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her work continues to focus on the mechanisms of diversity and propagation of viruses and suppression of this diversity and spread.

    (Reproduced from http://web.stanford.edu/group/kirkegaard/karla.html)

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Research focus
    drug resistance
    viral evolution
    dominant genes
    Experimental organism
    human
    mouse
    viruses

  5. Päivi Ojala

    University of Helsinki, Finland
    Imperial College London, United Kingdom

    Päivi Ojala is the Professor of Cancer Cell Biology at University of Helsinki and Chair of Viral Tumorigenesis at Imperial College London. She has made significant contributions to the Kaposi’s Sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV) field and has more recently focused also on the role of lymphatic endothelial microenvironment on cancer cell metastasis. She has expertise in organotypic 3D co-culture models, cell-based high-content screens, protein kinase signalling and viral technologies. Her work has led to demonstration of restoration of p53 function by small molecule inhibitors as a therapeutic modality for KSHV-induced lymphomas, identification of host Pim kinases, nucleophosmin, and the p53-p21 axis as novel regulators of viral replication, and shown that KSHV infection reprograms lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs) to a new, more invasive cell type. They have also demonstrated that LEC interaction with melanoma cells leads to increased distant organ metastasis in vivo, which is dependent on MMP14, Notch3 and b1-integrin- Dr. Ojala holds a doctoral degree in Molecular Genetics from the University of Helsinki, and has received postdoctoral training at the Yale School of Medicine, CT, USA.

    Expertise
    Cancer Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    human tumor viruses
    virus-host interactions
    tumor microenvironment
    metastasis
    Competing interests statement
    Päivi Ojala receives funding from the Academy of Finland, Sigrid Juselius Foundation, Cancer Foundation Finland and University of Helsinki.

  6. Gisela Storz

    National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, United States

    Gisela Storz has been an Investigator in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Maryland since 1991. She obtained a BA in Biochemistry from the University of Colorado in 1984 and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1988, where she studied the bacterial response to oxidative stress working with Bruce Ames. Her current work is focused on understanding gene regulation in response to environmental signals and elucidating the roles of small RNAs and small proteins of less than 50 amino acids in these regulatory networks. Dr. Storz was the recipient of the American Society for Microbiology Eli Lilly Award and is a member of the American Academy of Microbiology, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and US National Academy of Sciences.

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Chromosomes and Gene Expression
    Research focus
    small noncoding RNAs
    oxidative stress
    gene regulation
    bacterial physiology
    regulatory RNAs
    Experimental organism
    E. coli
    Competing interests statement
    Gisela Storz is employed by the Intramural Program of the National Institutes of Health. She served on the Scientific Advisory Board of Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology. In addition to being a Senior Editor for eLife, she is an Editor at RNA and on the Editorial Boards of mBio, Annual Reviews of Genetics and Microbiology Spectrum.

Reviewing editors

  1. Sonja V Albers

    University of Freiburg, Germany

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    Archaea
    Sulfolobus
    Haloferax

  2. Axel A Brakhage

    Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (HKI), Germany

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
    Research focus
    infection biology of fungi
    microbial secondary metabolism
    microbial communication
    biotechnology
    transcription factors
    macrophages
    neutrophils
    Experimental organism
    aspergillus
    myxococcus xanthus
    Streptomyces

  3. Jean-Laurent Casanova

    The Rockefeller University, United States

    Expertise
    Genetics and Genomics
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Research focus
    Human genetics of infectious diseases
    primary immunodeficiencies
    Experimental organism
    human

  4. Flaminia Catteruccia

    Harvard School of Public Health, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    vector biology
    malaria
    vector-plasmodium interactions
    reproductive biology
    Experimental organism
    anopheles gambiae

  5. Isaac Chiu

    Harvard Medical School, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Neuroscience
    Research focus
    neuroimmunology
    pain
    microglia
    somatosensation
    infection

  6. Jon Clardy

    Harvard Medical School, United States

    Expertise
    Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
    Ecology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    microbial secondary metabolism
    chemical communications
    biosynthesis
    chemical biology
    microbial chemical ecology

  7. Christine Clayton

    Zentrum fuer Molekulare Biologie der Universitaet Heidelberg (ZMBH), Germany

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Human Biology and Medicine
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Research focus
    trypanosomes
    mRNA degradation
    RNA-binding proteins

  8. Guangxia Gao

    Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    retroviruses
    HIV-1
    virus-host interactions
    Experimental organism
    mouse
    viruses

  9. Jean Greenberg

    University of Chicago, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Plant Biology
    Research focus
    local and long distance signalling in innate immunity
    plant-microbe interactions
    bacterial pathogens
    Experimental organism
    arabidopsis thaliana
    N. benthamiana
    tomato
    pseudomonas

  10. Peter Greenberg

    University of Washington School of Medicine, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    microbe-microbe communication

  11. Sophie Helaine

    Imperial College London, United Kingdom

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    Host pathogen interaction
    bacterial pathogenesis
    persistence
    antibiotic persisters
    toxin-antitoxin systems
    Experimental organism
    Salmonella

  12. Prabhat Jha

    Saint Michael's Hospital, Canada

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Human Biology and Medicine
    Research focus
    epidemiology
    global health
    infectious disease and population dynamics
    randomized controlled trials

  13. Mark Jit

    London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and Public Health England, United Kingdom

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    immunisation
    health economics
    mathematical modelling of infectious diseases

  14. Bavesh Kana

    University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    tuberculosis
    differentially culturable bacteria
    mycobacteria
    actinobacteria
    cell wall
    peptidoglycan
    peptidoglycan hydrolases
    amidase
    cell division
    cell surface remodelling
    dormancy
    latency
    Experimental organism
    mycobacterium tuberculosis
    mycobacterium smegmatis

  15. Frank Kirchhoff

    Ulm University Medical Center, Germany

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    functional virology
    origin, evolution and pathogenicity of HIV-1
    HIV

  16. David M Knipe

    Harvard Medical School, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    DNA viruses
    epigenetic regulation
    latent infection
    innate and intrinsic immunity
    vaccines
    Experimental organism
    mouse

  17. Urszula Krzych

    Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, United States

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    malaria
    adaptive immunity
    vaccines

  18. Michael Laub

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States

    Expertise
    Cell Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    Bacterial cell cycle
    bacterial systems biology
    signal transduction
    protein evolution

  19. Elena Levashina

    Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Germany

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    malaria ecology
    mosquito immune system
    Experimental organism
    P. falciparum

  20. Wenhui Li

    National Institute of Biological Sciences, China

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    virus infection
    hepatitis b/d virus
    receptor
    antivirals
    Experimental organism
    human
    mouse
    viruses

  21. Marc Lipsitch

    Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, United States

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    mathematical modeling
    evolution of pathogens
    epidemiology of infectious diseases
    Experimental organism
    streptococcus pneumoniae

  22. Tam Mignot

    Aix-Marseille University, France

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Physics of Living Systems
    Research focus
    signal transduction
    motility
    bacterial development
    bacterial cell biology
    Experimental organism
    myxococcus xanthus

  23. Shaeri Mukherjee

    University of California, San Francisco, United States

    Expertise
    Cell Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    membrane traffic
    host-pathogen interactions
    endoplasmic reticulum
    Experimental organism
    Legionella pneumophila

  24. Dianne Newman

    California Institute of Technology, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    evolution of photosynthesis
    physiological functions of redox active "secondary metabolites"
    Experimental organism
    R. palustris
    P. aeruginosa

  25. Phil Newmark

    Morgridge Institute for Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States

    Expertise
    Developmental Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    Planarian
    regeneration
    Schistosoma
    germ cells

  26. Thorsten Nurnberger

    University of Tübingen, Germany

    Expertise
    Cell Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Plant Biology
    Research focus
    innate immunity
    plant-microbe interactions
    plant immunity
    Experimental organism
    arabidopsis thaliana

  27. Kim Orth

    University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, United States

    Expertise
    Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    Virulence factors
    Type III secretion
    pathogenesis
    autophagy
    Experimental organism
    Vibrio spp
    E. coli
    human
    S. cerevisiae

  28. Julie Overbaugh

    Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    virology
    mechanisms of viral pathogenesis
    vaccines
    HIV/AIDS

  29. Paul Rainey

    Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Germany

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Evolutionary Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Plant Biology
    Research focus
    adaptive radiation
    evolution of individuality
    evolutionary genetics
    ecological genetics
    emergence of infectious diseases
    forecasting evolution

  30. Isabel Rodriguez-Barraquer

    University of California, San Francisco, United States

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    dengue
    malaria
    Zika
    vector-bone diseases
    serology
    modeling
    Experimental organism
    human

  31. Antonis Rokas

    Vanderbilt University, United States

    Expertise
    Evolutionary Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    phylogenomics
    genome evolution in fungi and animals
    evolution of fungal secondary/specialized metabolic pathways
    evolution of mammalian pregnancy
    Experimental organism
    fungi

  32. Thomas Scriba

    University of Cape Town, South Africa

    Expertise
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Research focus
    tuberculosis
    immunology
    vaccination
    biomarkers
    T cells
    clinical trials

  33. Viviana Simon

    The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United States

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    viral-host interactions
    retroviral restriction factors
    HIV drug resistance

  34. Dominique Soldati-Favre

    University of Geneva, Switzerland

    Expertise
    Human Biology and Medicine
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    host-parasite interactions
    apicomplexa biology
    cell motility
    Experimental organism
    toxoplasma gondii
    plasmodium

  35. Wesley Sundquist

    University of Utah School of Medicine, United States

    Expertise
    Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
    Research focus
    virus-host interactions
    retroviruses
    HIV
    Experimental organism
    human

  36. Peter Turnbaugh

    University of California, San Francisco, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    metagenomics
    human gut microbiome
    nutrition
    pharmacology
    bacteriophages
    CRISPR-Cas systems
    gnotobiotics
    microbial metabolism
    Experimental organism
    human
    mouse

  37. Kevin Verstrepen

    VIB-KU Leuven Center for Microbiology, Belgium

    Expertise
    Evolutionary Biology
    Genetics and Genomics
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    genomics
    systems biology
    yeast genetics
    Experimental organism
    S. cerevisiae

  38. Blake Wiedenheft

    Montana State University, United States

    Expertise
    Chromosomes and Gene Expression
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    bacteriophages
    genome editing
    host-parasite interactions

About sections

  1. About eLife
  2. Aims and scope
  3. Editors and people
  4. Peer review
  5. Openness
  6. Innovation
  7. Early-careers
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