Conference Speaker

Jeffery K. Taubenberger, National Institutes of Health, USA

Jeffery K. Taubenberger, M.D., Ph.D., is Chief of the Viral Pathogenesis and Evolution Section in the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Prior to coming to NIAID in 2006, he served as Chair of the Department of Molecular Pathology at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) in Washington, DC, a position he held since 1994. Dr. Taubenberger received a B.S. in Biology from George Mason University in 1982, and his medical degree in 1986 and Ph.D. in 1987 from the Medical College of Virginia, where he was elected into the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. He did his residency in pathology at the National Cancer Institute. He holds dual board certifications in Anatomic Pathology and in Molecular Genetic Pathology from the American Board of Pathology and the American Board of Medical Genetics, and holds appointments as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anatomy at the Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University and in the Department of Population Health and Pathobiology at the College of Veterinary Medicine, NC State University.

His clinical interests have been chiefly in the development and implementation of molecular diagnostic assays for neoplasia and infectious diseases. Dr. Taubenberger’s research interests include influenza virus biology, pathophysiology, and surveillance. Among his key contributions to the field was the characterization of the virus responsible for the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed approximately 50 million people worldwide. In 2005, Dr. Taubenberger and colleagues published sequence and phylogenetic analyses of the complete genome of the 1918 virus. The journal Science named this article as one of the “science breakthroughs of 2005.” Also in 2005, Dr. Taubenberger co-authored a paper in Science, “Characterization of the Reconstructed 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic Virus,” which described the first virologic study of the reconstructed 1918 virus. The journal Lancet chose both of these articles jointly as their “2005 paper of the year.”

A recipient of numerous awards and a frequent speaker at national and international meetings, Dr. Taubenberger was named the ABC News ‘Person of the Week’ in October 2005. In 2006 he received the Outstanding Alumnus Award from the School of Medicine, Medical College of Virginia, the Joseph Kinyoun Award from NIAID, the Rave Award for Medicine from Wired Magazine, and was elected into the Association of American Physicians. In 2008 he received the Outstanding Alumnus Award from George Mason University, and in 2009 was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology. He has published over 160 papers in such journals as Science, Nature, and the New England Journal of Medicine, and has written 14 book chapters. His influenza work has generated national and international publicity since 1997.

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