Eric Weaver PhD

Dr. Eric Weaver now serves as director of the Nebraska Center for Virology and a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His current research explores the use of bioinformatics, phylogenetics, immunology, and molecular biology to study the basic mechanisms of host-pathogen interactions and to create improved vaccines against microbial diseases. His research program can be broken into two arms, vaccine antigen design and vaccine platform design. First, they are testing ancestral/centralized genes to determine if they are useful as universal vaccines in vivo. In addition, they are exploring systems biology approaches to improve vaccine antigen design to improve the breadth and efficacy of the vaccine antigens. Second, vaccine platform design explores the use of alternative viral vectors as vaccines, as well as the development of safer more effective viral vaccine platforms.