Scientific Insights

Drs. Paul Hergenrother & Rebecca Lee Smith - COVID-19 Testing & Tracing

Dr. Paul Hergenrother, PhD is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), whose organic chemistry lab characterizes natural products to identify novel cellular targets and formulate treatments for cancer & drug-resistant bacteria. He along with Dr. Martin Burke and other UIUC staff led the effort undertaken at UIUC to develop a COVID-19 saliva test, which was implemented campus-wide to facilitate in-person education and garnered national attention in mid-August 2020 (NPR, Science). Dr. Rebecca Lee Smith, PhD is an Associate Professor of Pathobiology at the UIUC, whose epidemiology lab develops statistical models of disease transmission to control viral spread in real-time. Her work has played an essential role in contact tracing throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and yielded a 0.5-0.7% on-campus infection rate, with zero students hospitalized as of November 2020.

Bijal Trivedi - History of Cystic Fibrosis

Bijal Trivedi, MS is an award-winning Journalist and Author of Breath from Salt, a book about the history of cystic fibrosis (CF). Breath from Salt is a story of a breakthrough in modern medicine that chronicles the discovery & characterization of the cystic fibrosis, the formation of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and how their unprecedented collaboration with Vertex Pharmaceuticals has resulted in treatments that significantly improve the quality of life for patients with CF.

Florian Krammer - COVID-19 Vaccine Development

Dr. Florian Krammer, PhD is a Professor of Vaccinology in the Department of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, whose lab investigates the antibody responses towards glycoproteins on the surface of influenza viruses. He recently authored a review in the journal Nature that provides an overview of SAR-CoV-2 vaccines currently in clinical development.