Christopher Mores
The George Washington University
Symposia Attended
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Research Statement
Dr. Mores is an arthropod-borne virologist (arbovirologist), trained in infectious disease epidemiology, who develops focused laboratory and field studies to examine the mechanisms by which arthropod-borne and other zoonotic viruses persist in, emerge from, and expand to particular ecologies, transmission cycles, and regions. He takes, by necessity, an interdisciplinary approach to these studies, melding expertise in viral ecology, strain characterization and theoretical expansion, with those of his collaborators in molecular biology, immunology, entomology, and clinical interventions. The central hypothesis of his research is that intrinsic characteristics of an arbovirus can act powerfully upon the transmission of that virus, and that these characteristics often result in further extrinsic interactions with other components of the transmission cycle. Although this may seem intuitive, the relative importance of the characteristics of the virus versus say, those of the vector, environment or the vertebrate host are often under investigated and poorly understood.
