Eva Harris

Eva Harris (born August 6, 1965) is a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, and the founder and president of the Sustainable Sciences Institute. She focuses her research efforts on combating diseases that primarily afflict people in developing nations.

Harris received a BA in biochemical sciences from Harvard University in 1987 and a PhD in molecular and cell biology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1993.

After a post-doctoral fellowship and Assistant Adjunct Professorship at the University of California, San Francisco, Harris joined the faculty at UC Berkeley. There, she developed a multidisciplinary approach for studying the virology, pathogenesis, and epidemiology of dengue fever, the most prevalent mosquito-borne viral disease in humans. Harris' lab studies the mechanism of dengue virus infection of human dendritic cells. The lab is also developing a mouse model to study viral tropism and the immune response to dengue virus infection, to generate a better model of the disease. Harris' fieldwork focuses on molecular and epidemiological field studies of dengue in endemic Latin American countries, particularly in Nicaragua. Ongoing fieldwork projects include clinical and biological studies of severe dengue, a pediatric cohort study of dengue transmission in Managua, and a project on evidence-based, community-derived interventions for prevention of dengue via control of its mosquito vector. Harris is currently initiating studies of dengue pathogenesis in humans, focusing on functional characterization of antibodies and B cell memory response, host gene expression profiling, and viral factors such as quasispecies. Harris is also collaborating with investigators at the UC Berkeley College of Engineering to develop the ImmunoSensor: a novel, rapid, low-cost diagnostic device for point-of-care diagnosis of dengue and other infectious diseases. She served as co-director of the "International Training and Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases" program at the Fogarty International Center from 1997 to 2003.

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