About Us

Adam Waickman, PhD, SUNY Upstate

Dr. Adam Waickman, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and Laboratory Director at the Institute for Global Health and Translational Sciences at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY, USA. His group focuses on understanding how the interactions between infectious organisms and the human immune system result in pathogenesis and/or durable immunity with a specific focus on dengue virus and related vector-borne pathogens.

Tina Campagna, MPH, SUNY Upstate

Tina Campagna is the Director of the Center for Education and Training for the Upstate Global Health Institute, Instructor in the Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, and directs the MPH in Global Health and Translational Science concentration at SUNY Upstate Medical University. In these roles, Ms. Campagna facilitates global health-related educational experiences for all types of learners. She earned a B.S. in Biology from Syracuse University, MPH from SUNY Upstate Medical University and Syracuse University, and is currently earning a PhD in Education at the University at Buffalo.

Stephen Thomas, MD, SUNY Upstate

Dr. Thomas is an Infectious Diseases physician-scientist from SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY, USA. He is a Professor of Medicine and Professor of Microbiology & Immunology. Dr. Thomas currently directs the Upstate Global Health Institute and is the Frank E. Young, MD ’56 and Leanne Young Endowed Chair of Microbiology & Immunology. Dr. Thomas earned his Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Biomedical Ethics from Brown University, his Medical Degree from Albany Medical College, and completed his Internal Medicine residency and Infectious Diseases fellowship at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Capital Consortium. Prior to joining Upstate, Dr. Thomas served in the U.S. Army at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and completed his career as the institute’s Deputy Commander for Operations. Dr. Thomas specializes in the study of infectious diseases with a focus on diseases caused by viruses. He spent more than five years of his early military career living and working in Thailand and Southeast Asia.

Madison Searles, MPH, SUNY Upstate

Madison works as a Project Assistant in the Center for Education and Training. In this role she provides overall assistance and program coordination to the Center for Education and Training within the Upstate Institute for Global Health and Translational Science. She earned a bachelor’s from SUNY Environmental College of Science and Forestry and a Master’s in Public Health from SUNY Upstate Medical University.

Katie Anderson, MD PhD, SUNY Upstate

Kathryn B. Anderson, MD/PhD, is a physician-scientist, an internist and epidemiologist, with 20 years of experience researching emerging infectious diseases. In this capacity, she has worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US Army, and multiple academic institutions. She received her Masters of Science in Public Health, her MD, and her PhD in epidemiology from Emory University and has worked for several years as an internal medicine physician and as a federally-funded researcher conducting community-based research in Asia on mosquito-borne viruses such as dengue and chikungunya. She moved to Central New York from Minnesota in late 2019 to lead SUNY Upstate’s Center for International Research and was quickly pulled into the response to SARS-CoV-2 at the institutional and community level. She began her role as County Health Commissioner in Onondaga County in early November 2022, in which capacity she has broadened her scope to tackle both communicable and non-communicable health threats such as lead poisoning, drug user health, and health disparities.

Alan Barrett, PhD, UTMB

Alan DT Barrett, Ph.D., D.Sc (Hon) is Director of the Sealy Institute for Vaccine Sciences, Professor in the Department of Pathology, and is holder of the John Sealy Distinguished University Chair in Vaccinology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. He obtained his PhD from the University of Warwick, completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and became an academic at the University of Surrey (1985-1993). In 1993. Dr. Barrett moved to the University of Texas Medical Branch and became Director of the Sealy Center for Vaccine Development (2008), which was re-designated the Sealy Institute for Vaccine Sciences in 2017. He was elected Fellow of the International Society for Vaccines (2014), Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (2016), and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science Degree from the University of Warwick (2018). His research interests are vaccine development of flaviviruses (dengue, Japanese encephalitis, West Nile, tick-borne encephalitis, yellow fever, and Zika). His research has resulted in him authoring more than 375 papers, reviews, commentaries, and book chapters. He is Founding Editor-in-Chief of Nature partner journal (npj) Vaccines (2015-present).

Darunee Buddhari, MD, AFRIMS

Dr. Darunee Buddhari has been a Medical Research Scientist with the Virology Department at WRAIR-AFRIMS for 16 years. She leads multiple clinical research projects at the Kamphaeng Phet (KPP) field site of AFRIMS in Thailand (KAVRU), focusing on dengue, influenza, and emerging diseases such as Chikungunya, Zika, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2. WRAIR-AFRIMS has a long history of conducting large-scale clinical trials for infectious disease countermeasures, including Phase III trials of the Japanese Encephalitis and Hepatitis A vaccines 30 years ago and more recent studies like the 2019 dengue vaccine trials. The KAVRU laboratory specializes in dengue and related arboviruses, as well as influenza and other respiratory viruses. Dr. Buddhari also serves as the principal investigator for the KPP-Family Cohort Study (KFCS), a multigenerational study involving 3,500 participants under continuous surveillance for over 10 years

Eng Eong Ooi, MD PhD, Duke NUS

Eng Eong Ooi trained in medicine at the University of Nottingham and completed his PhD studies on molecular epidemiology at the National University of Singapore. He has been conducting research on various aspects of dengue, from disease mechanisms to epidemiology, for the past 25 years. He is a three-time recipient of the Clinician-Scientist (Senior Investigator) Award and more recently, the recipient of the Singapore Translational Research Award, all from the National Medical Research Council of Singapore. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Science Translational Medicine and an Editorial Board member of PLoS Biology.

Derek Cummings, PhD, Johns Hopkins SOPH

Derek is an infectious disease epidemiologist engaged in theoretical and field studies of disease transmission. The goal of his research is to understand the temporal and spatial dynamics of the spread of infectious diseases to inform interventions to control their spread. He is interested in the dynamics of dengue, influenza, SARS-CoV-2 and chikungunya. He currently leads field studies of influenza in China, dengue and chikungunya in Brazil and Lyme disease in the US.

Rebecca Christofferson, PhD, LSU

Rebecca Christofferson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathobiological Sciences at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine. She has a background in statistics, lab-based investigation of arbovirus transmission, and mathematical modeling. Her current research focuses on the factors that define the (re)emergence of arboviruses and zoonotic viruses, especially environmental determinants of transmission trajectories. She uses a combination of laboratory, field, and computational methods to interrogate assumptions made about emergent pathogen transmission. She is especially interested in the One Health approach to mitigating outbreaks, including collaborative and trans-sectoral solutions mapping for pandemic planning and response.

Albert Ko, MD, Yale School of Public Health

Dr. Albert Icksang Ko is the Raj and Indra Nooyi Professor of Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health and a Collaborating Researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Brazilian Ministry of Health. His research centers on the health problems that have emerged as a consequence of rapid urbanization and social inequity. Dr. Ko coordinates a research program in Brazil, which focuses on delineating the role of social marginalization, urban ecology and climate in the emergence of infectious disease threats in slum communities and informal settlements. Dr. Ko is also Program Director of the Fogarty/NIH Global Health Equity Scholars Program which provides research training opportunities for US and LMIC post and pre-doctoral fellows at collaborating international sites. He is a member of the WHO R&D Taskforce for Zika Virus and R&D Blueprint Working Group. During the pandemic, he served with Indra Nooyi as co-chair of Governor Lamont’s Reopen Connecticut Advisory Group. Dr. Ko continues to advise the Governor and the State on its pandemic prevention and control plan, in addition to supporting the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in its COVID-19 response in Brazil.