Diane E. Griffin, M.D., Ph.D.

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.