Announcements

The Duke Consortia for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD) annual retreat was held last week from Oct 19-22, with over 150 people attending.  The four day retreat brought together some of the brightest minds in HIV vaccine development to share their work with collaborating peers and investigators. Presentations and discussions ranged from immunogen design to inducing broad neutralizing antibodies for vaccine development.

Congratulations to the recipients of the 2020 Duke Consortia for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD) Annual Meeting awards. Recipients are recognized for their dedication and contributions to the Duke CHAVD program, which aims to develop an effective HIV-1 vaccine for global use. The Duke CHAVD is led by Dr. Bart Haynes.

Duke CHAVD Pre-Doctoral Award

Danny Morris - University of  Pennsylvania 

Zekun Mu - Duke University

Duke CHAVD Post-Doctoral Award

Kartik Mann - Duke University

Marvin Gondlin - University of Pennsylvania

The Duke Police Department (PD) celebrated the promotion of David Morgan to Lieutenant with a pinning ceremony on October 6th. Lt. Morgan has served the Duke University Police Department for 15 years. He was promoted to Security Sergeant in 2008 and has worked for the Global Health Research Building (GHRB), home of the Duke Regional Biocontainment Laboratory (RBL) since 2013. Prior to serving the GHRB, Lt. Morgan worked for the Duke PD squad and Duke University Hospital.

Maria Blasi, PhD, in collaboration with Duke's Bryan Kraft, MD and Christina Wyatt, MD have started a new COVID-19 study looking for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in urine samples of patients with acute kidney injury.

The shooting of Jacob Blake by police, followed by the killing of two protestors in Kenosha, Wisconsin, only underscores the state of inequality that persists in American society. The DHVI will continue to affirm its stance against racial inequality and call for each of its members to actively promote social justice and change for our nation. The leadership of the DHVI stands with the leadership of the School of Medicine in denouncing senseless gun violence and police brutality against black and brown Americans.

DHVI MD PhD candidate, Jennifer Jenks receives NIH F30 grant funding for her project, "Immune correlates of protection against nonprimary congenital cytomegalovirus transmission in an HIV-infected mother-infant cohort." 

After more than 30 years of commitment to Duke University and 10 years to the EQAPOL program, we would like to announce Ms. Janet Staats, Research Laboratory Manager for the (External Quality Assurance Program Oversight Laboratory) EQAPOL Flow Cytometry ICS program has retired effective December 31, 2019. Over the years, Ms. Staats has applied her wealth of experience and knowledge to the EQAPOL contract and should be acknowledged for the dedication in which she has served the EQAPOL Flow program.