Appointment of Dr. Nancy Sullivan as Director of the National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratory (NEIDL)
From Dr. Jean Morrison, University Provost and Chief Academic Officer
and Dr. Gloria Waters, Vice President and Associate Provost for Research
Last spring, we launched an international-level search for a new director of the National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratory. Over the past several years, the NEIDL has emerged as a leading academic research center on world-threatening emerging infectious diseases – including how to identify them, how to track them as they spread, and how to treat or prevent them – for the benefit of public health locally, nationally, and globally. The NEIDL is an essential leading element of the University’s Strategic Plan. It was critical, therefore, that we find a scholar and leader with the credentials, energy, and strategic vision to head this important center and continue its upward trajectory to a world-class center of scientific excellence in infectious disease.
Over the last year, a search committee chaired by Ken Lutchen, dean of the College of Engineering, reviewed applications from candidates within the academic, public sector, industry, and research communities for the position of director. We are delighted to announce that after this rigorous and highly competitive process, Dr. Nancy Sullivan will be joining Boston University as the next director of the NEIDL.
Dr. Sullivan is chief of the Biodefense Research Section at the Vaccine Research Center, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH), where, over the past 18 years, she has overseen an interdisciplinary team of scientists committed to understanding emerging infectious diseases and their potential solutions. She is a leader in infectious disease research who has built her scientific career on a core philosophy of conducting robust, hypothesis-driven research centered on important scientific questions. She has devoted her career to high-impact science and earned an international reputation for basic and translational research that is characterized by scientific and technological innovation and a vision for anticipating and preparing for emerging infectious diseases through insightful work on vaccines and therapeutics.
Dr. Sullivan received her BS in biology from Merrimack College and an MS in environmental health sciences and ScD in cancer biology and retrovirology from Harvard School of Public Health. Following her ScD, she held positions as a research fellow at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, the University of Michigan, and the Vaccine Research Center at NIAID. She conducted hands-on work at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases BSL-4 facility to develop Ebola vaccines and therapeutics. She was a founding member and part of the design committee for the BSL-4 Integrated Research Facility at NIAID.
Dr. Sullivan co-discovered the first vaccine to protect primates from Ebola virus and discovered a protective monoclonal antibody, mAb114, that is being used in its treatment. She is an NIH subject matter expert in several areas including filoviruses, medical countermeasures for public health emergencies, accelerating COVID-19 therapeutic interventions and vaccines, and pandemic preparedness, and a World Health Organization subject matter expert on Marburg vaccines. She is a member of the NIAID Pandemic Preparedness Working Group. She has received numerous NIH Merit and Director awards for her research and discovery of filovirus vaccines; for novel and groundbreaking vaccines, outbreak response and the development of effective therapeutics for Ebola; and for COVID-19 outbreak response. In all these efforts, she is known for her extraordinary dedication and teamwork. Her research on Ebola vaccines led to her being called out as Time’s 2014 Person of the Year in “The Ebola Fighters” (the healthcare workers and scientists who tackled an outbreak of the disease in West Africa) and to her inclusion in the Politico Top 50 in 2015.
Dr. Sullivan’s official start date at Boston University will be December 1. We hope that you will join us in formally welcoming her to the BU community in the months ahead. In the interim, we are grateful that Dr. Ron Corley will continue in his role as director until then.
The past several years have demonstrated in stark relief the importance of advancing science to confront both re-emerging threats and future, as-yet unknown, emerging pathogens. We look forward to following the NEIDL’s success under Dr. Sullivan’s direction and want to express our gratitude to Dean Lutchen and members of the NEIDL Director Search Committee (listed below) for the considerable time, thought and discussion they devoted over the last year to this important selection process.
NEIDL Director Search Committee
Chair:
Kenneth Lutchen, Dean, College of Engineering
Members:
Karen Allen, Professor and Chair of Chemistry, College of Arts & Sciences
Tamar Barlam, Professor and Section Chief of Infectious Diseases, School of Medicine
Nahid Bhadelia, Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases, School of Medicine; Founding Director, Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy & Research; Associate Director, National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratory
John Connor, Associate Professor of Microbiology, School of Medicine
Robert Davey, Professor of Microbiology, School of Medicine
Gloria Waters, Vice President and Associate Provost for Research
Staff:
Sarah Flanagan, Executive Assistant to the Vice President and Associate Provost for Research