PhD Career Connections is excited to welcome Jennifer Anstadt, Team Lead Microbiologist, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Dr. Jennifer Anstadt joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2015 as Team Lead of the Vaccine Development Laboratory within the Polio and Picornavirus Laboratory Branch. She currently leads a team of eight scientists, including two postdoctoral fellows, five senior scientists, and an animal technician. The primary focus of her team’s research is designing and developing a new generation of poliovirus vaccines better suited for the eradication era. The team also investigates the mechanisms of attenuation and immune protection underlying these new vaccine candidate strains. In addition to poliovirus vaccines, the team also explores novel vaccine candidates for several other picornaviruses, including EV-71, and is currently developing a mouse model to better understand EV-D68 pathogenesis. It was this integration of basic research with a direct impact on public health that drew Dr. Anstadt to pursue a career at the CDC

Dr. Anstadt is a graduate of Fairfield University, with a B.S. in Biology. She earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied alphavirus pathogenesis and innate immunity in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Johnston. She completed an NIH-funded postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University Medical Center under the mentorship of Dr. Terry Dermody, before transitioning to a Research Instructor position within the Dermody Laboratory team. While at Vanderbilt, Dr. Anstadt’s research focused on reovirus neuropathogenesis, including the identification of a new receptor for reovirus in the brain. She was named a Kathryn M. Edwards Fellow, and was deeply involved in the Vanderbilt Postdoc Association, serving terms as President and Vice-President. Over the past 15 years, her research has focused on investigating host-pathogen interactions and disease pathogenesis of neurotropic viral infections, with publications in Cell Host & Microbe, PLoS Pathogens, and the Journal of Virology.

PhD Career Connections: Working at the CDC