Katharine Bossart, PhD

Associate Director, Collaborative Research Core; Assistant Professor of Microbiology

Bossart spent four years working at the National Australian Animal Health Laboratory, where her research focused on rapid identification of viruses during disease outbreaks in humans and animals, with emphasis on foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) as well as flaviviruses including dengue virus, West Nile virus, and Japanese encephalitis virus.

A microbiologist specializing in emerging and re-emerging viruses, another aspect of Bossart’s work centers around two unusual BSL-4 paramyxoviruses—Hendra and Nipah—which can infect animals and transmit disease to humans.

Katharine Bossart’s research into these viruses began nearly a decade ago at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD, where she developed potent antivirals that prevented virus entry into host cells, engineered a potential vaccine, and developed sensitive serological tests for differentiating between the Hendra and the Nipah viruses.