CURED BERKELEY
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Infectious Diseases & Global Health
The science the world needs exists at Berkeley.
CURED and CEND Infectious Diseases & Global Health is how we deploy it.
The COVID-19 pandemic taught us that the health of one region impacts us all, and that the next pandemic will emerge where human and animal life collide.
At the same time, new approaches are urgently needed to tackle the infectious diseases that continue to cause the greatest global suffering, including HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and drug-resistant infections. Berkeley isn't waiting. Our researchers are already in the field, in the places where these threats originate or persist, as well as in the lab doing the fundamental science that is the only real path to solutions.The Center for Emerging and Neglected Diseases at Berkeley, a program of CURED, is committed to creating a world in which all global citizens can live healthy and fulfilling lives.
Goals
The questions we address will fundamentally transform our ability to control and combat infectious diseases. How do viruses spill from animals into humans? What are the best approaches to combat antibiotic resistance? Why does the immune system fail to eliminate chronic infections such as TB and HIV?
By integrating our strengths in public health, laboratory science, computation and AI we can translate biological data into real-time public health tools and move discoveries directly into a translational pipeline, where they become the vaccines and therapeutics the world needs next.
What we're doing
Key Personnel
Cara Brook, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Integrative Biology
Jeff Cox, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Molecular & Cell Biology
Eva Harris, Ph.D.
Professor
School of Public Health
Molly Ohainle, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Molecular & Cell Biology
Kathryn Roberts, M.P.H.,Ph.D.
Executive Director
Dept. of Molecular & Cell Biology
Kimberly Seed, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Dept. of Plant & Microbial Biology
Tierra Smiley Evans, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Integrative Biology
School of Public Health
Sarah Stanley, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Public Health​
Russell Vance, Ph.D.
Professor
Dept. of Molecular & Cell Biology
Charlie Whittaker, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
School of Public Health
Our Infectious Disease Initiative unites >70 Faculty from 8 Departments/Schools to research the root mechanisms that underlie disease
​​​Our faculty carry out this work at Berkeley and abroad through deep and long-standing research partnerships in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Through the Alliance for Global Health and Science, we build the regional scientific infrastructure to sustain it.
Through our global field sites, we are asking why mountain gorillas don't get HIV, how bats carry deadly viruses without getting sick, and what those answers mean for human medicine.
We are tackling the diseases that have defeated conventional medicine for decades, including HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and drug-resistant infections, with the deep laboratory science Berkeley is built to do, targeting the mechanisms that have kept these pathogens one step ahead.
Tuberculosis
#1 infectious disease killer, bacterial disease of poverty
Close collaborative group with shared BSL3 facility
We are asking: why is TB so successful in infecting humans?
Developing new vaccines and new immunotherapies
Viral Infections
Beyond COVID-19, viruses pose multiple threads to human health
Mosquito-borne viruses: Dengue, Zika
How does infection with one virus influence infection with a second virus?
Viruses that cause cancer: KSHV
What permits viruses to jump from animals and begin spreading in humans?
Alliance for Global Health
Through CURED CORPS (Collaborative Outbreak Research and Preparedness Science), we are training scientists in the regions where these threats emerge, building partnerships and local capacity that will outlast any single outbreak.
– Summer Research Institutes train students and faculty in cutting edge laboratory techniques
– Helped build capacity for diagnostics during pademics in Uganda: COVID-19 and Ebola
– Training and research support for African PhD students including collaborative projects
– Support for bioinformatics and training in AI at Makerere University in Uganda