March 1, 2024
CEZID/CBID Seminar Series presents Mehul Suthar
Submitted by Chrstine Huncovsky
The COBRE Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, or CEZID, is hosting Mehul Suthar, associate professor in the department of pediatrics-infectious disease at the Emory University School of Medicine, in the next presentation in the CEZID Distinguished Speaker Seminar Series.
Suthar will present "Immune Control of SARS-CoV-2 infection" at 3 p.m. Friday, March 1, in Room 201 on the second floor of Trotter Hall. The seminar will also be available via Zoom.
Suthar is also a member of the Emory Vaccine Center and the Emory National Primate Research Center. Suthar received a bachelor's degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from Pennsylvania State University and a doctorate in microbiology and immunology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 2007. He continued to a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington, where he combined his passion for emerging viral infections with innate immunity. He was among the first to describe the critical role of the RIG-I-like receptors in mediating innate immune signaling, viral pathogenesis, adaptive immunity and infection outcome.
In 2012, Suthar started his lab at Emory University, which is focused on understanding the molecular and immunological mechanisms by which emerging viral infections are controlled by the host. His lab uses a multidisciplinary approach spanning fields of virology, immunology, molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics and systems biology to study immunity to emerging viral infections. His group has three major areas of interest: define virus-host interactions that regulate innate immune signaling and viral control; understand how CD8+ T cells mediate viral control and clearance; and understand the antibody response to virus infection. Suthar's research program has spanned across several RNA viral infection models, including flaviviruses, alphaviruses and coronaviruses.
More recently, Suthar has been involved in a large effort to study the antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination. His group is co-leading the NIH-led SAVE program which is focused on identifying, characterizing and assessing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 variants on vaccines currently in use.
The CEZID seminar series is organized in the diagnostic medicine and pathobiology department in the College of Veterinary Medicine and is hosted by CEZID director, Juergen Richt.