Location: CARL 0049 

Research Interests: The overall goal of my research is to understand the effect of human genetic variation on susceptibility to and severity of influenza infection. Specifically, I've developed a novel method call scHi-HOST (single-cell- throughput Human in vitro Susceptibility Testing), which leverages scRNA-seq to simultaneously assign genetic identity to individual cells in mixed infections of cell lines of European, African, and Asian origin, reveal associated genetic variants for viral entry and replication and identity expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs). Knowledge of the genes involved in influenza pathogenesis could inform the development of novel host-directed therapies for influenza infections. In addition to revealing genetic variants associated with differential outcomes of influenza infection, this approach is also scalable and can be easily applied to other microbes.