Research

Funding Opportunities

The Summer Research Scholars Program through PIDS (pediatric infectious disease society) is a funded summer research program ($3,000) for research in a variety of fields in pediatric infectious diseases. Applications due around early April, and your mentor must be a member of PIDS. The application can be found online.

The GERM (Grants for Emerging Researchers/Clinicians Mentorship) program was developed to provide grants to medical students to support a longitudinal, mentored clinical learning and/or research project for up to a year on infectious diseases-related topics, including HIV, under the mentorship of an IDSA or HIVMA member. Learn more on the ID Society website.

Benjamin Kean Travel Fellowship in Tropical Medicine is awarded annually to support medical students involved in clinical or research electives in tropical areas. The Fellowship is designed to encourage young people to continue their work in tropical medicine and hygiene and recognize their achievements thus far. More information and the application can be found online.

Gap Year Opportunities

UCSD Global Health Institute GloCal Fellowship provides aspiring global health researchers with outstanding interdisciplinary education and training in innovative research designed to improve health for populations around the world. A career development fellowship sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Fogarty International Center (FIC), this program supports awarded fellows from all 10 UC campuses as well as 22 affiliated international sites across 18 countries. This is a funded gap year program with sites offering various infectious disease opportunities. Learn more at the Global Health Institute website.

UCLA’s South American Program in HIV Prevention and Research (SAPHIR) is an NIH-funded, year-long training program in comprehensive HIV prevention research for Pre-Doctoral and Post-Doctoral (MD-level) physician trainees from U.S. institutions. All Fellows participate in a structured program of didactic education and practical research in one of the major fields of HIV prevention (Behavioral Prevention, Biomedical Prevention, Antiretroviral Therapy, Epidemiology, or Basic/Translational Science). Each SAPHIR Fellow is matched with a pair of mentors from UCLA and one of our collaborating international sites in Lima, Peru Rio de Janeiro, or Porto Alegre, Brazil. This is a gap year program. More information can be found online.

Academic Research

Interested medical students, MD/PhD students and residents can participate in academic research with a faculty member and/or fellow. Below is an brief description of our faculty’s academic interests:

Faculty Name	Project Domain	Field of Study
Dr. John Arnold	Clinical Research Research administration	Former IRB Chair Multi-Site clinical research leadership Adenovirus basic science research
Dr. John Bradley	Clinical Research	Development of antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal agents (Phase 1-4 antimicrobial therapeutics) Novel therapies for CA-MRSA and MDR GNRs PK/PD modeling and simulation for anti-infective dose optimization Phage Therapy Clinical treatment guidelines Osteomyelitis
Dr. Chris Cannavino	MedEd Clinical Research	Development and implementation of novel delivery methods for medical education (e.g. learning modules, master clinician program, BP) Development of anti-infective agents (Phase 1-4 antimicrobial therapeutics) Clinical treatment algorithms Novel diagnostic platforms in ID
Dr. George Liu	Basic & Translational Research	Pathogenesis of Gram-positive organisms (Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, P. acnes) Vaccine development
Dr. Edmund Milder	Clinical Research QI	Antimicrobial Stewardship Diagnostic Stewardship Microbiome
Dr. Amaran Moodley	Clinical Research	Prospective natural history study of enterovirus D68 associated acute flaccid myelitis in children
Dr. Pia Pannaraj	Translational Research Public health	Maternal-infant vaccines/infections Optimization of immunization strategies Human milk Microbiome role in infant immune development
Dr. Alice Pong	Clinical Research QI	Prevention of hospital acquired infections Hospital based respiratory virus epidemiology Antimicrobial stewardship Infectious disease laboratory stewardship Tuberculosis
Dr. Nanda Ramchandar	Clinical Research	mNGS and other diagnostics Bone and joint infections Vlinical practice
Dr. Mark Sawyer	Research CAL MedEd	Immunization policy and assessment Immunization education for providers and community Improved immunization delivery
Dr. Steve Spector	Basic & Translational Research	HIV/AIDS pathogenesis Host/pathogen interactions Associations of host genetic variants on HIV diseases progression and HIV-related disease
Dr. Johana Tovar Padua	Clinical Research QI	Immunocompromised host Microbiome, FMT for treatment of MDR organisms Transplant Infectious Diseases Clinical treatment pathways and policy
Pieter Dorrestein, PhD	Basic Research	New mass spectrometry (MS) based methods to understand the chemistry of microbes, our microbiome and their ecological niche. Tools that translate the chemical language between cells. https://dorresteinlab.ucsd.edu
Jack Gilbert, PhD	Basic Research	The human microbiome. Microbial ecology of the built environment including hospitals. The intricate relationship between our microbiota and our health. http://www.gilbertlab.com
Rob Knight, PhD	Basic Research	The human microbiome. Developing state-of-the-art computational and experimental techniques to ask fundamental questions about the evolution of the composition of biomolecules, genomes, and communities in the complex microbial ecosystems of the human body. https://knightlab.ucsd.edu/
Nathan Lewis, PhD	Basic Research	Systems biology, -omics data analysis, network modeling, and synthetic biology. Cellular processes that influence cell growth, protein secretion, and metabolic regulation, to engineer cells for drug development and to discover the biochemical basis of disease. http://lewislab.ucsd.edu
Dr. Victor Nizet	Basic Research	Bacterial pathogenesis, innate immunity including macrophage and neutrophil function, exploring novel approaches to therapy for sepsis and antibiotic-resistant pathogens. http://nizetlab.ucsd.edu
Bernhard Palsson, PhD	Basic Research	Development of methods to analyze metabolic dynamics (flux- balance analysis, and modal analysis), and the formulation of complete models of selected cells (the red blood cell, E. coli, CHO cells, and several human pathogens). Systems biology of antibiotic resistance. http://systemsbiology.ucsd.edu
Dr. Manuela Raffatellu	Basic Research	Her research focuses on the interactions between bacterial pathogens and the immune response in the gut. Her recent efforts aim to design new strategies to reduce colonization of pathogens without affecting the beneficial microbes that inhabit our body. https://raffatellu.com
Elizabeth Winzeler, PhD	Basic Research	Phenotypic screens and compound testing to accelerate the search for new malaria treatments and malaria prevention methods. Chemical biology, in vitro evolution and whole genome sequencing to discover "chemically-validated" targets for structure guided drug design. Experimental systems, including yeast and human cells, to understand how drug resistance emerges. https://winzeler.ucsd.edu
Karsten Zengler, PhD	Basic Research	Complex interactions of microorganisms. Interactions between microbes, their environment, or their host play a crucial role in health and disease. A community systems biology approach involving both experimental and computational methods to unravel genome organization and community composition, metabolism, and exchanges microbes are engaged in. https://www.zenglerlab.co
Brookie Best, PharmD	Clinical Research	Pharmacokinetics (PK) and pediatric clinical pharmacology research. Anti-HIV drugs in infants, children, adolescents and pregnant women. Drugs used to treat Kawasaki disease, maternal-fetal clinical pharmacology, therapeutic drug monitoring, antiretroviral pharmacogenomics, and penetration of antiretrovirals into the CNS.
Edmund Capparelli, PharmD	Clinical Research	Clinical pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic and disease modeling in pediatric populations using population methods. Leads a NIH supported Center for Research in Pediatric and Developmental Pharmacology and a specialized pharmacology laboratory for its pediatric HIV (IMPAACT) Network.
Dr. George Sakoulas	Clinical Research	Clinical therapeutics of antibiotic-resistant pathogens. The pharmacodynamic interactions of the various classes of anti- staphylococcal and anti-enterococcal antibiotics with each other and with innate host defense molecules such as cathelicidins and platelet-derived antimicrobial peptides.
Dr. Adri Tremoulet	Clinical Research	Pediatric pharmacology and the testing of new therapies for immunological and infectious diseases. Kawasaki disease, clinical trial design, biomarker and immunological profiling.
Dr. Fabian Rivera-Chavez	Research	How bacterial enteric pathogens use their virulence factors to modulate host-microbe metabolism in order to grow to high concentrations and transmit to a new host during infection. We use animal models of disease coupled with bacterial and host genetics to study the molecular mechanisms of toxin-mediated pathogen growth and transmission.
Dr. Alejandro Chavez	Research	Our lab specializes in the development of new technologies to speed the rate of discovery. Our lab works to develop new ways to screen for small molecule therapeutics, design next generation genome engineering technologies, and evolve proteins towards new activities. We use a variety of model systems ranging from yeast to human cells and perform our research within a team based environment.

If you are interested in connecting with a faculty member on a research project, please contact Dr. Cannavino.