Ramesh Akkina

Dr. Akkina’s early contributions were in Influenza virology and stem-cell based gene therapy strategies. He pioneered research work using humanized mouse models for HIV, Dengue and Zika viruses. His lab has tested pre-exposure prophylaxis methods to prevent HIV transmission, evaluated anti-HIV si-RNAs and aptamers, showed that immune exhaustion during HIV infection can be partially reversed and developed an ultra-sensitive in vivo assay to detect latent HIV. Ongoing work is centered on HIV evolution from the ancestor SIV progenitors and HIV elite controllers. He is a member of many editorial and international grant review boards and was a visiting professor at UCLA and Duke-NUS Singapore. He currently serves as the CSU Center Director for Global Virus Network (GVN), an international organization of prominent virologists around the world involved in addressing the constantly evolving and newly emerging viruses.