I am an Associate Professor of Medicine at HMS and a Physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases (ID) at BWH. I am an R01-funded infectious disease physician-scientist focused on clinical and translational virology research while providing teaching and patient care to the highest standards. I am the Principal Investigator of a translational virology laboratory focused on tackling HIV and respiratory viruses. My group’s research encompasses both laboratory-based and clinical investigations, and we have published >180 papers, including >85 first or last author papers in high impact journals, including the NEJM, JAMA, Nature Medicine, Nature Microbiology, Science Translational Medicine, and Annals of Internal Medicine. I was awarded the 2024 BWH Department of Medicine Faculty Research Excellence Award. I am the Principal Investigator of both an NIH R01s and a P01, as well as funding from the CDC, ACTG, and other sources.
One of the main research interests of my group is in the study of HIV drug resistance, persistence, and HIV suppression without antiretroviral therapy (ART). Recent work in my laboratory has focused on understanding factors that predict when HIV will rebound after treatment interruption and the mechanisms behind the rare phenomenon of post-treatment HIV controllers (PTCs) who are able maintain virologic control despite stopping ART. We have described the CHAMP cohort of HIV PTCs and also published a number of studies, including in PNAS and Science Translational Medicine, elucidating factors associated with HIV rebound timing. Our research interests have also included the development of novel technologies, including deep sequencing and single-genome assays for the analysis of HIV minority variants, reservoir, and HIV integration site characterization. I am also the PI of a multicenter cohort study of individuals with non-suppressible HIV viremia despite ART. We recently published the results in Nature Medicine, uncovering the key viral, integration site and immune features of non-suppressible viremia, which has implications for our understanding of HIV persistence across all individuals with HIV. Within the ACTG (AIDS Clinical Trials Group), I have been the co-Chair of the ACTG A5308 study of antiretroviral treatment for HIV-1 controllers and the co-Chair of the ACTG A5345 study of biomarkers of viral rebound timing. I am also the protocol virologist for 7 other ACTG studies.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, my group has added SARS-CoV-2 and respiratory viruses as a major area of research. I initially led the sample collection efforts of the Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness (MassCPR) and I’m now a member of the MassCPR Steering Committee. My laboratory has pioneered advanced viral quantification and sequencing techniques to show the critical role of viral dissemination in SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis. My group is also interested in understanding SARS-CoV-2 evolution and the origins of new variants, and we published one of the first in-depth virologic and immunologic analysis of persistent COVID-19 in the NEJM. I am the co-PI of the prospectively enrolled POSITIVES outpatient study of COVID-19 and through this platform, we have identified the immunocompromised profiles and immune defects that increase the risk of chronic COVID-19 published in Science Translational Medicine. Furthermore, our work in the POSITIVES study has explored viral dynamics across variants and in the setting of antiviral therapy. Finally, I am the Protocol Virologist for the ACTIV-2/ACTG A5401 Adaptive Platform Treatment Trial for Outpatients with COVID-19 and my group has led numerous analysis of antiviral drug resistance, viral dynamics and evolution published in Nature Microbiology and Annals of Internal Medicine.
I am the recipient of the 2024 BWH Department of Medicine Research Excellence Award, the Maxwell Finland Award for Research Excellence by the Massachusetts Infectious Disease Society, and an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI). I hold a number of active and past leadership roles both locally and nationally. Locally, I am the Director of the Harvard/Brigham Virology Specialty Laboratory, the Harvard University Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) Clinical Core, the BWH ID Fellowship Research Director. Nationally, I am very active in the ACTG and IDSA. Within the ACTG, I have served on the Executive Committee and currently serve as the Vice Chair for the HIV Reservoirs and Eradication Transformative Science Group and Director of the Virology Core Laboratories. In the IDSA, I am the Deputy Editor for the Journal of Infectious Diseases and a member of the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel.
I am an active clinician and care for patients in the outpatient ID clinic and attend on the inpatient ID consult service at BWH. I was also awarded the Edward H. Kass Award for Clinical Excellence by the Massachusetts Infectious Disease Society. Finally, I take great pride in teaching and have been involved in teaching/mentoring students, postdoctoral fellows, and infectious disease fellows. I also serve as the BWH ID Fellowship Research Director, helping mentor ID fellows as they begin their research careers. I am also a faculty member of the Harvard Virology Graduate Program and he has been active in both mentoring graduate students, but also serving on dissertation and exam committees.