Konstantin (Gus) Kousoulas, PhD, LSU School of Veterinary Medicine (Chair)

Dr. Konstantin Gus Kousoulas received his BS in Physics from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, NJ, and his MS and PhD degrees from Pennsylvania State University in Biophysics and Molecular Cell Biology, respectively. He received postdoctoral training at the University of Chicago working in Dr. Bernard Roizman’s laboratory and at the University of California at San Francisco with Dr. Lenore Pereira, where later he was promoted to Research Assistant Professor. He joined Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA in 1988 and became professor in 1994. He is currently Professor of Virology and Biotechnology at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine with adjunct appointments at the Department of Biological Sciences, College of Basic Sciences, the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, and the LSU Health Sciences Center’s Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center in New Orleans. He is also an affiliate member of the Tulane National Primate Research Center located in Covington, LA. He is serving as the Head of the Department of Pathobiological Sciences and Director of the Division of Biotechnology & Molecular Medicine at LSU’s School of Veterinary Medicine. He is the Principal Investigator of the Louisiana Biomedical Research Network funded by NIH:NIGMS and other extramural and intramural sources.

Afonso Silva, PhD, University of Pittsburgh Center for Neuroscience

Dr. Silva received his Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from Universidade Federal de Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil, and his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Carnegie Mellon University, where he worked on non-invasive MRI measurements of cerebral blood flow using the arterial spin labeling technique. He then went on to do post-doctoral training in the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research at the University of Minnesota, where he studied the temporal and spatial characteristics of functional brain hemodynamics under the supervision of Prof. Seong-Gi Kim. Dr. Silva joined NINDS as a Staff Scientist in 1999, and became a tenure-track investigator in 2004. Dr. Silva obtained tenure in 2012. His laboratory combines modern neuroimaging techniques (functional MRI, and optical imaging) with electrophysiological recordings aimed at understanding the mechanisms of regulation of cerebral blood flow during normal and stimulation-induced brain activity. In 2018, Dr. Silva was invited by the Dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Dr. Arthur Levine, and by the Chair of the Department of Neurobiology, Prof. Peter Strick, to occupy an Endowed Chair Full Professor of Neurobiology position at the University of Pittsburgh. This invitation stemmed largely from Dr. Silva’s expertise in establishing the marmoset as an attractive animal model in neuroscience research.

Robert Seder, MD, National Institutes of Health

Dr. Seder received his B.A. in Natural Science at Johns Hopkins University in 1981 and his M.D. at Tufts University in 1986 and completed his residency in internal medicine at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. Dr. Seder did his postdoctoral training at NIAID with Dr. William Paul. He is currently Chief of the Cellular Immunology Section in the Vaccine Research Center in the NIAID, NIH. Dr. Seder’s laboratory has focused on the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which vaccines and adjuvants mediate protective immunity in mouse, and non-human primate models of HIV, Malaria, Tuberculosis and cancer. His work has demonstrated the importance of the quality of T cell responses in mediating protection against various infections and the importance of the route of vaccination in generating tissue resident T cells for protection against malaria and TB. Dr. Seder has translated his scientific discoveries and led the first in human clinical studies using intravenous vaccination to generate protective immunity with an attenuated malaria vaccine and recently showed that a monoclonal antibody he discovered can prevent malaria infection against intense seasonal transmission in African adults. Over the two years, Dr. Seder has helped lead the pre-clinical development of the Moderna mRNA vaccine against COVID. This provided pre-clinical data for demonstrating safety and efficacy of the Moderna vaccine in animals prior to the initiation of the pivotal Phase 3 study in humans and more recently provided the scientific basis for boosting humans with mRNA against variants.

Joyce Cohen, VMD, DACLAM, Emory National Primate Research Center

Joyce K. Cohen, VMD, DACLAM, is the Associate Director of the Division of Animal Resources at the Emory National Primate Research Center. She is also an Associate Professor in Emory University School of Medicine’s Division of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and a diplomate of the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine (DACLAM).

Dr. Cohen joined the Emory Primate Center (EPC) in 2006 with responsibility for clinical medicine, colony management, residency training, research support and administration at the EPC Field Station. She was promoted to Lead Veterinarian at the Field Station in 2009 and appointed as Assistant Director of Animal Resources at the Main Center in early 2012. In her current role as Associate Director, she oversees the division of Animal Resources, which includes Animal Care, Animal Records, Behavioral Management, Colony Management, Occupational Health and Safety, Research Resources and Veterinary Medicine.

Her research interests include a combination of laboratory animal medicine, research, veterinary medicine and behavioral primatology. She has published research on the incidence of diabetes and helicobacter in sooty mangabeys, and is currently engaged in research on the microbiome of the sooty mangabey. She collaborates with investigators on infectious disease studies, such as AIDS and Zika virus infection, and she manages the NIH-supported Specific Pathogen Free (SPF) Rhesus monkey breeding colony.

Dr. Cohen has been involved in a number of facility design projects for the benefit of the center’s animals at both research sites, including the Clinical Veterinary Medicine and Research Building, the automated feeders attached to socially housed monkey compounds and novel indoor/outdoor animal housing.

She received her veterinary medical degree from The University of Pennsylvania and her postdoctoral training in laboratory animal medicine at the Tri Institutional Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Weill Medical College and Rockefeller University.

Carol Shively, PhD, Wake Forest University School of Medicine

Carol A. Shively, Ph.D., is currently a Professor in the department of Pathology/ Comparative Medicine and holds appointments in the Departments of Psychology, Physiology & Pharmacology, the Translational Science Institute, and the Primate Center at Wake Forest School of Medicine. Dr. Shively received her Ph.D. degree in Psychology from the University of California at Davis in 1983, completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and was appointed to the faculty of Pathology/Comparative Medicine in 1986. Dr. Shively won the National Association for Women’s Health Annual Award for Excellence in Research, and is listed in Who’s Who of American Women, and International Who’s Who. She reviews and consults for NIH, reviews for numerous journals, and has been guest editor for journal special topic editions. She has authored or coauthored over 85 research papers, and taught Animal Behavior, Developmental Psychobiology, Primatology, and Doctor-Patient Relationships. Dr. Shively has devoted her 30 year research career to understanding the biological bases of behavior and its contributions to disease susceptibility primarily through the study of nonhuman primate models. Her research has focused on how social stress increases the risk of coronary heart disease, depression, metabolic syndrome, obesity, and endometrial cancer risk. Dr. Shively was the first to demonstrate that stress causes the deposition of fat in the viscera in primates, and also the first to develop an adult primate model of depression. Her current research includes studies of: the relationship between social status, social stress, and depression; social stress and visceral obesity; depression and CHD risk; the effects of dietary patterns on physiological stress responses and depression; 5) neurobiological characteristics of depression; 6) maternal social subordination stress and offspring health; and 7) functional assessments of aging in monkeys.

Donald Conrad, PhD, Oregon National Primate Research Center

Don Conrad, Ph.D. was recruited to OHSU in 2018 as chief of the newly established Division of Genetics at the Primate Center. He is a broadly trained human geneticist with over 15 years of experience in developing statistical and experimental methods for genome analysis. He obtained a Ph.D. in Human Genetics from the University of Chicago, studying with Dr. Jonathan Pritchard, and then did three years of post-doctoral training with Dr. Matthew Hurles at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK. Before joining OHSU, Dr. Conrad was faculty at Washington University in St. Louis where he ran his own research group in the Department of Genetics, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2017.

Dr. Conrad’s early career involved pioneering work in genome-scale analysis of DNA copy number variation (CNV), during which time he played a major role in mapping CNVs for numerous international genetics consortia and published what still stands as the highest resolution array-based map of human copy number variation. As a post-doc at the Sanger Institute he led the first analysis to compare the germline mutation rate among human families using whole genome sequencing.