Delisa Fairweather PhD

DeLisa Fairweather, Ph.D., is a Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic Florida with a joint appointment in the Department of Immunology and adjunct appointments at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. She received her PhD in Immunology and Microbiology from the University of Western Australia and conducted a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She is Co-Director of Research for the Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) Clinic at Mayo Clinic Florida as well as Chair of Student Scientific Development, Clinical and Translational Sciences (CTS) Predoctoral Program, Mayo Clinic, Enterprise-wide.

Dr. Fairweather’s research focuses on sex/gender differences in chronic inflammatory diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, autoimmune diseases, and EDS. She has had funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the American Heart Association (AHA), the Department of Defense (DOD), and Industry throughout her career. She served for 6 years as a standing member of the Atherosclerosis and Inflammation of the Cardiovascular System (AICS) study section for NIH and as chair of two AHA study sections. She has also served as a grant reviewer for the EPA and Department of Defense. She has over 160 publications and an H-index of 62.

Dr. Fairweather is a Fellow of the AHA (FAHA) and the Heart Failure Society of America (FHFSA). She serves on the board of the Atwal Foundation and the Scientific Advisory boards of the Myocarditis Foundation, the International Academy of Cardiology, and the International Society of Cardiomyopathy, Myocarditis and Heart Failure (ISCMF). She served on the Board of the Myocarditis Foundation for 8 years. She is an active member of the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences (OSSD), where she has held many leadership positions over the years, including as Co-Chair of the Program Committee in 2013 and 2022.

During the pandemic, she was a leader on the USFDA BARDA-funded Mayo-led Expanded Access Program for the use of convalescent plasma for patients with COVID-19, which provided convalescent plasma to 95,000 individuals in 5 months and was inducted into the Library of Congress and received a Team Science Award from Mayo Clinic. She has served on two National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committees to investigate adverse events from COVID-19 vaccines and the NASEM committee to make recommendations for the NIH autoimmune disease portfolio, which led to the Office of Autoimmune Disease Research under the NIH Director in 2023.