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Dr. Diane E. Griffin
is Professor and Alfred and Jill Sommer Chair of the W. Harry
Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology and
Director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute at Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She earned a biology
degree from Augustana College in 1962, followed by M.D. (1968) and
Ph.D. (1970) degrees from Stanford University School of Medicine.
She was a resident in Internal Medicine at Stanford University
Hospital between 1968 and 1970, before beginning her career at
Johns Hopkins as a postdoctoral fellow in Virology and Infectious
Disease. After completing her post-doctoral work, she was named an
assistant professor of Medicine and Neurology. Since then, she has
held the positions of Associate Professor, Professor, and now
Professor and Chair. She served as an Investigator at Howard
Hughes Medical Institute from 1973-1979.
Dr. Griffin's research interests include alpha-viruses, acute
encephalitis and measles. Alpha-viruses are transmitted by
mosquitoes and cause encephalitis in mammals and birds. She has
identified determinants of virus virulence and mechanisms of
non-cytolytic clearance of virus from infected neurons. Studies
of measles are focused on identification of the mechanisms of
virus-induced immuno-suppression in the context of virus
clearance. Vaccine studies are defining the basis for atypical
measles and a new vaccine that can induce protective immunity in
infants under the age of 6 months is under development using a
rhesus macaque model.
Dr. Griffin is the principal investigator on a variety of grants
from the National Institutes of Health, the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation and the Dana Foundation. She is the author or
co-author of more than 300 scholarly papers and articles and is
the past president of the American Society for Virology, the
Association of Medical School Microbiology Chairs and the
American Society for Microbiology. She is a member of the
National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of
Microbiology and the Institute of Medicine.
Biography courtesy of the Maryland Commission for Women,
2009.
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