Virology: Life Cycle and Host Interactions

Catherine Jacob-Dolan, PhD, is an immunologist and vaccinologist who trained at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for her PhD. She then worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Immunology at Harvard Medical School in Boston. She now works as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Departments of Basic Science and Vaccine and Infectious Disease at the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center. She continues to study the humoral immune system and its responses to viral infections and vaccine responses. Some of her past work includes pre-clinical work on multiple COVID-19 vaccines now approved for use in humans around the world, work on clinical samples investigating the immunogenicity of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant people and immunosuppressed transplant recipients, work on pre-clinical mucosal vaccines for COVID-19 and Influenza, and work comparing clinical and pre-clinical vaccines for Mpox. Her work can be found in high-impact scientific journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Science, Cell, and JAMA. Jacob-Dolan has taught undergraduate, masters, and PhD students at Harvard College and medical students at Harvard Medical School since 2020, receiving multiple awards for distinction in teaching. She continues to carry out virology, vaccinology, and immunology research and mentors technicians, PhD students, and masters students in the lab.