Silvana Gaudieri, PhD, has a research program at Vanderbilt University Medical Center that involves understanding the host/pathogen interaction and its influence on infection outcome to inform vaccine design and the use of anti-viral agents. She was the first to show that host immune responses can affect hepatitis C virus variation at a population level and how this phenomena has important implications in vaccine design for hepatitis C. Subsequent papers in this area expanded on the original concept and were published in the highly-ranked Hepatology and Gut journals.
She has been awarded fellowships from international and national funding bodies to pursue this research and has been part of successful funding applications to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Australian medical research funding body, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).
Dr. Gaudieri has also been invited to present her research findings at national and international conferences and to chair sessions. She has authored more than 90 original articles, reviews, and book chapters including seminal papers in high-ranking journals with more than 3,000 citations. She has been involved in delivering and coordinating units at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels for several years in the areas of genetics, immunology, and infectious diseases and has mentored several PhD and master’s students to completion. She has been actively involved in the administrative aspects of academia in the roles of deputy head of school, graduate research coordinator, and member of faculty boards.