Infectious Disease
As COVID has underlined anew, infectious disease presents a huge health threat both globally and locally. The World Health Organization estimates that infectious diseases are responsible for about 1 out of every 5 years of healthy life lost due to disease or disability.
This burden falls most heavily on the countries in the bottom half of the global income distribution. As a result, most infectious diseases and the organisms that cause them receive little attention from large pharmaceutical companies and the wealthy countries that have the research and clinical capacity to develop new treatments for these diseases.
UCSC faculty are working on viral, bacterial and other infectious organisms with goals of understanding how they cause disease, and how the associated health burdens can be treated, reduced and prevented.
Faculty
Grant Hartzog
Professor, Associate Dean
Molecular, Cell, & Developmental Biology
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Jacqueline Kimmey
Assistant Professor
Microbiology & Environmental Toxicology
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John MacMillan
Interim Vice Chancellor for Research, Professor
Chemistry and Biochemistry
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Matt Sparke
Professor
Politics, Executive Director of Global and Community Health
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William Sullivan
Distinguished Professor
Molecular, Cell, & Developmental Biology
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