The Duke Human Vaccine Institute is pleased to announce that Kshitij Wagh, PhD, has been recruited to a faculty position in the Duke Human Vaccine Institute (DHVI), effective May 15, 2024.
Wagh has over 15 years of research experience in theoretical and computational biology. He has published more than 50 articles, including more than a dozen in high impact journals like Cell, Science, Science Translational Medicine, Cell Host and Microbe, Science Immunology, Annual Reviews of Immunology, and PNAS.
“We are delighted about the addition of Dr. Kshitij Wagh to DHVI faculty,” said Kevin Wiehe, PhD, director of computational biology at DHVI. “Kshitij has a unique expertise in using computational approaches for understanding virus evolution. He has been instrumental in developing vaccine design strategies that are informed by the insights gained from studying virus evolution. His addition to our computational team promises to accelerate our efforts in developing an HIV vaccine and a pan-coronavirus vaccine, and we are excited about the innovative contributions he will bring to DHVI.”
Wagh has had collaborations with several Duke researchers for the last ten years as part of four NIH-funded grants and one Gates Foundation-funded grant. He is also an investigator with the Duke Center for HIV Structural Biology (DCHSB). He is particularly interested in understanding viral evolution and diversity with the goal of using these to rationally design cross-reactive antibody vaccines against high-diversity viruses such as HIV, Coronaviruses, Influenza, and Filoviruses.
Wagh received his B.Tech in engineering physics at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. He completed his PhD at Rutgers University New Brunswick and began his postdoctoral training with Bette Korber, PhD, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in theoretical biology and biophysics.