Infectious Diseases Research Investigation
About Our Research Training
Trainees interested in pursuing a career in research investigation have a wide variety of opportunities ranging from HIV clinical research including behavioral and epidemiologic studies to bench work focusing on vaccine development, host-responses, and innate immunity. To make the transition to the research years, the fellowship leaders will meet several times during first year of fellowship to assist the fellow in identifying a specific area of research and potential research mentors. Once identified, fellows will work with this designated mentor throughout the remainder of their training. This mentor will supervise a fellow's development into an independent investigator which includes the development and implementation of research projects, publications, and grant submissions that will be used to obtain funding for project support and salary support in the non-ACGME years. Listed below are some of the research mentors within the Division of Infectious Diseases at BIDMC and their research interests.
Our Research Mentors
Dr. Carolyn Alonso serves as the Director of the Transplant and Immunocompromised Host Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Her research focuses on the epidemiology and outcomes of C. difficile infection among immunosuppressed patients. Dr. Alonso has several open clinical trials in C. difficile research as well as an investigator-initiated grant to study C. difficile immune response within transplant and immunocompromised patients. Additional areas of active research investigation include clinical trials evaluating invasive fungal infections as well as a trial investigating patients treated with systemic mold-active triazole medications. 
Dr. Barouch is the Director of the 
Dr. Blair’s clinical interests are providing exceptional care to the immunocompromised host especially those undergoing solid organ transplantation and bone marrow transplant. She is particularly interested in performing relevant clinical research into the infections that affect these patients including viral infections such as EBV, CMV and respiratory viral pathogens. She uses her clinical interests to design curriculum and educate fellows in the infectious diseases affecting transplant and immunocompromised hosts. In this role, she has collaborated with other members of the multiple BIDMC transplant programs to develop local guidelines and clinical pathways.
Dr. Chan received her MD from Case Western Reserve University and completed internal medicine residency at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. She then went on to complete infectious disease fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Her current research focuses on investigating the use of antibiotics at the end of life in the hematology/oncology population. Her interests include general infectious diseases, antibiotic stewardship, and infection control.
Dr. Karchmer's research interests include antibiotic chemotherapy, endocarditis, infections of foreign bodies, infections in diabetics, and immunocompromised patients. 
Dr. Douglas Krakower is a member of the faculty in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the BIDMC, Research Scientist at The Fenway Institute, and Assistant Professor in Medicine and Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on ways to optimize HIV prevention in health care settings with a focus on implementing HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).
Dr. Larnard received his MD from the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and completed his Internal Medicine training at New York Presbyterian-Columbia prior to coming to BIDMC for Infectious Disease fellowship and staying on as faculty. He is interested in all things medical education and completed the Clinician-Educator Track for Fellows during his Infectious Disease training at BIDMC. Currently, his research focus is investigating antimicrobial prescribing at the end of life to inform future educational and/or stewardship initiatives in this population. He is also starting as Medical Director of Outpatient Parenteral Antibiotic Therapy (OPAT) and is looking forward to improving the care of ID patients as they are transitioned across care settings.
Dr. LaSalvia joined the faculty in 2013 after serving as a resident, chief resident, and infectious diseases fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). She currently serves as the Interim Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases while also continuing to be the Clinical Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Medical Director of Ambulatory Clinical Operations in the Department of Medicine as well as Medical Director of Ambulatory Quality in the Silverman Institute of Health Care Quality.
Dr. Mayer has been conducting bio-behavioral studies of HIV prevention in high-risk populations in the US at Fenway Health, and in several international studies overseas, particularly India. He has led studies of HIV chemoprophylaxis (PEP, PrEP, and topical microbicides), vaccines, as well as social and structural interventions. He is the New England site Principal Investigator for the NIH's HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) and Microbicides Trials Network (MTN) consortia; and co-PI of the Harvard HIV Vaccine Trials Unit. He was one of the national chairs of HPTN 061, a study focused on developing HIV prevention interventions for Black men who have sex with men, and is Protocol Co-Chair of HPTN 069, which is evaluating Maraviroc for use as PrEP. He is also funded by NIMH to work with behavioral scientists to develop adherence interventions for PrEP users.
Dr. Ruvandhi Nathavitharana is a TB researcher and attending physician in Infectious Diseases at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Nathavitharana's research interests center around the use of implementation science to evaluate TB diagnostic algorithms and interventions to decrease TB transmission in high TB incidence countries with a focus on Peru and South Africa, funded by an NIH K23 Career Development Award and ASTMH Burroughs Wellcome Fellowship. Dr. Nathavitharana has served as a technical expert analyzing data to inform WHO guideline development group panel recommendations on the use of line probe assays and the urine lipoarabinomannan test for the diagnosis of TB. Dr. Nathavitharana is also the Vice Chair of TB Proof, an advocacy organization based in South Africa that seeks to destigmatize TB and mobilize national and global resources to end TB.
Dr. Rowley is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a past member of the Essex Laboratory at the Harvard School of Public Health. His primary laboratory interests were related to HIV drug resistance in southern Africa and he was the principal investigator of an NIH-funded study to monitor for transmitted HIV drug resistance in Botswana and has worked to develop techniques allowing for low cost alternatives for resistance testing. Since leaving the laboratory, he has served as the Associate Program Director for the ID Fellowship and has been engaged in research within the Infectious Diseases Division related to the infectious complications of opioid use disorder. He currently serves on the hospital-wide Opioid Care Committee and as the Director of Opioid Use Disorder Education for the Department of Medicine at the BIDMC. 
Dr. Shapiro is an Associate Professor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. His research involves improving birth outcomes and childhood survival among HIV-exposed infants in the developing world. He has led several studies to evaluate new strategies to prevent mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT), including the use of maternal antiretroviral therapy (ART) in breastfeeding. He is currently the principal investigator on studies in Botswana that evaluate the relationship between antiretroviral therapy and adverse birth outcomes, risk factors for childhood mortality, the potential benefit of very early antiretroviral treatment for HIV-infected infants in the Early Infant Treatment Study, and use of broadly neutralizing monoclonal antibodies (bNAbs) as a treatment strategy for HIV-infected children. He is the co-investigator on studies to evaluate neurodevelopmental outcomes in children exposed to antiretrovirals and community-wide combination prevention strategies to reduce HIV incidence. He is also an active research and clinical mentor in Botswana and Boston, and mentor within a teaching and training program that he initiated for rotating Harvard-based clinicians at one of the district hospitals in Botswana. The results of his research in Botswana have been used to direct health policy in Botswana and internationally, and through this work, he has become a scientific advisor to the World Health Organization for the development of guidelines for PMTCT, pediatric antiretroviral treatment, and infant feeding. 
Dr. Stead received her MD from the University of Massachusetts and completed her Internal Medicine Residency and ID Fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, joining the BIDMC faculty with a joint appointment in the Divisions of Infectious Diseases and General Medicine and Primary Care in 2003. She completed a Rabkin Fellowship in Medical Education in 2010 and dedicates herself to patient care, medical education, and curriculum development work at the residency and fellowship levels, winning many awards for teaching, mentorship, and humanistic care. She currently serves as Chief of the Hermann Blumgart Firm for BIDMC's Internal Medicine Residency Program and as Program Director of the BIDMC Infectious Diseases Fellowship. Her active research interests include examining the effects of interdisciplinary education strategies on collaboration between specialty services, communication skills in patients with opioid use disorders, trainee wellness, and gender bias in academic medicine. She also loves narrative medicine and writing stories about her inspiring patients and has been fortunate to have several essays published in JAMA's Piece of my Mind. 
Dr. Stephenson is a physician-scientist who specializes in infectious diseases and HIV immunology, and the goal of her research is to develop novel biomedical interventions to prevent and treat HIV and emerging infectious diseases. In particular, she is interested in the design and evaluation of HIV vaccines and monoclonal antibodies that can be effective in the face of tremendous HIV sequence diversity, as well as in the development of Zika and COVID-19 vaccines. As an immunologist, her expertise is in the extensive epitope mapping of cellular and humoral immune responses. As a clinical investigator, her expertise is in the translation of novel vaccines and monoclonal antibodies into First-in-Human, Phase 1 clinical trials, and she is the Director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research Clinical Trials Unit. She is also Associate Editor of Clinical Immunology. 
Dr. Pepe is a Medical Director and Associate Hospital Epidemiologist in the Division of Infection Control/Hospital Epidemiology, Infectious Diseases attending in the Division of Infectious Diseases, and Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She completed her undergraduate studies in Biology at New York University, and went on to pursue a Masters in Public Health in Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Pepe then attended medical school at New York Medical College and completed her Internal Medicine residency at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. She completed her Infectious Diseases fellowship at Yale School of Medicine/Yale New Haven Health, and spent an additional year as an inaugural Leadership in Epidemiology, Antimicrobial Stewardship and Public Health (LEAP) Fellow, sponsored by IDSA, SHEA, PIDS and funded by CDC. Dr. Pepe's interests include healthcare-associated infections, specifically catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs), sustainability in healthcare, emerging infectious diseases and environmental impacts on health. 
Dr. Pollock is the Associate Medical Director of the Infectious Diseases Diagnostic Laboratory at Boston Children's Hospital and a faculty member of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston. She is an Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School, with a joint appointment in Medicine. She completed her MD/PhD at the University of California, San Francisco; her medical residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston; and her infectious diseases/clinical microbiology fellowships at BIDMC.
Dr. Stack's current interests are in studying and developing antimicrobial stewardship (AS) and quality improvement interventions designed to optimize antimicrobial prescribing. His recent research includes a study of hepatobiliary surgical site infections at BIDMC designed to determine if the antibiotic surgical prophylaxis guidelines in place at our institution are optimal. He has also led an investigation of risk factors for fluconazole non-susceptible Candida in order to validate an empiric treatment algorithm for candidemia at the institution. He is currently investigating the use of rapid multiplex viral PCR testing and its impact on antimicrobial use in immunocompromised patients. In addition to helping to develop the AS curriculum for fellows at BIDMC, Dr. Stack is also a member of a working group at the Infectious Diseases Society of America tasked with developing a national AS curriculum for infectious diseases fellows. His clinical interests are broad and include general and immunocompromised infectious diseases as well as HIV. 
Dr. C. Sabrina Tan is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a Principal Investigator at the Center for Vaccine and Virology Research. The Tan lab has several focused area of research in viral neurol immunology. First, the lab investigates the host immune responses against the human polyomaviruses JCPyV and BKPyV. Human polyomaviruses infect most of the general healthy population, and cause fatal diseases in the immunocompromised population. The lab has established bone marrow as a JC virus latency site. Ongoing studies include establishing an animal model for JC virus primary infection and latency, analysis of JC and BK viral immune response in the transplantation patients, and determination of NK cell contributions to polyomaviruses. Second, the lab is conducting research in HIV infection in the brain by examining pathogenesis of acute infection with SIV in rhesus macaques and creating bispecific antibodies to cross the blood brain barrier. Third, the lab has been conducting clinical trials in antivirals to treat parainfluenza and RSV infections in immunocompromised patients. 
Dr. Taupin is interested in the intersection between healthcare quality and infectious diseases. As a Harvard Medical School Quality and Safety Fellow, he has multiple ongoing projects aimed at improving outcomes for our patient population. Currently, he is leading at effort to address beta-lactam allergies though the use of enhanced decision support for clinicians. He is additionally working to standardize guidelines and workflow for infectious disease screening and immunization for patients who will receive immunosuppressive medications. Lastly, he is evaluating hospital readmissions for patients with COVID-19 to identify areas for improvement in our management of this novel disease. Dr. Taupin's prior work has also involved evaluating outcomes for patients with uncomplicated Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia at BIDMC. He is also passionate about quality and safety education for trainees, which he pursued through leadership in the Housestaff Quality Council. Learn more about Dr. Taupin.
Dr. Weller has many active areas of basic laboratory research centered around understanding basic mechanisms of leukocyte functioning in forms of inflammation. The two principal areas of investigation are:
Dr. Wigmore received her MD from The George Washington University. She completed her internal medicine residency at Tufts Medical Center. She had the honor of spending an additional year at Tufts Medical Center as Chief Resident. She then began her infectious disease fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Disease in 2008 and joined as staff in 2010. Her focus is on both infectious diseases as well as general internal medicine with a joint appointment in primary care. Her interests include primary care of people living with HIV, hepatitis, tick borne illnesses, recurrent UTI’s, management of outpatient antibiotic therapy, and general infectious diseases.
Dr. Sharon Wright is the Senior Medical Director of the Division of Infection Control/Hospital Epidemiology and Hospital Epidemiologist in the Silverman Institute for Health Care Quality and Safety at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). She has served in this position since 2001. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and is on the faculty of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dr. Wright received her medical degree from the Columbia Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and her master’s degree in public health from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She completed her internal medicine residency at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and her infectious diseases fellowship in the Harvard Combined (Longwood) Training Program. She completed a second fellowship in Health Services Research at Boston Children's Hospital.
Dr. Zash is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, part of the Shapiro group at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and a Research Associate with the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership. The focus of her research is HIV in pregnancy and developing methodology to evaluate medication safety in pregnancy in low resource settings. Since 2014 she has helped to lead a large birth surveillance study in Botswana ('Tsepamo') to evaluate the safety of antiretroviral medication in pregnancy. Tsepamo collects information on a broad range of maternal and infant outcomes, from stillbirth and preterm delivery to maternal hypertension and anemia. High-profile findings from this study, about the association of dolutegravir and neural tube defects, have informed HIV treatment guidelines worldwide. Dr. Zash also leads a study to understand the mechanism of adverse birth outcomes among women with HIV on ART, with a focus on gestational hypertension, weight gain and endothelial dysfunction. In addition, Dr. Zash is a member of the DHHS Perinatal HIV Guidelines Committee and the Associate Director for Global Health Programs for the Internal Medicine Residency. Mentorship Outside of BIDMC
BIDMC fellows have the opportunity to work with primary mentors outside the BIDMC at one of the Harvard affiliated hospitals. Our fellows have a track record of working with mentors from Massachusetts General Hospital, Children's Hospital Boston, Brigham and Women's Hospital and The Ragon Institute. Fellows interested in working with mentors outside of BIDMC will continue to meet regularly with a BIDMC advisor throughout their fellowship training.
The Infectious Diseases Fellowship Training Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School is a fully ACGME-accredited program that offers comprehensive Infectious Diseases clinical training and education and many different research opportunities. Trainees joining our fellowship program will participate in the primary and consultative care for a diverse population of patients at BIDMC.
Scholarship Oversight Committee
A scholarship oversight committee (SOC) meets with each first year fellow just prior to the end of the first year of fellowship and again halfway during the second year of fellowship. The primary purpose of the SOC is to provide additional mentorship for the fellow as they start their research year and it consists of several ID faculty members with different research backgrounds. The SOC serves as a sounding board for the fellow and mentor to address any issues that may arise while working on the research project and creates a formal process where the research can be presented to a group that is not intimately familiar with the research to receive their constructive feedback. The SOC will offer suggestions about what seems feasible during this time period, raise different approaches to address residual questions which may not have been considered, and review and monitor the timeline of the research to ensure that progress is being made so the work can be completed. Individual members of the SOC often serve as informal mentors outside of the formal SOC process to ensure the research experience is optimized.
Research in Progress Meetings
Research within the ID Division is presented frequently in an informal setting allowing for feedback to help improve the research prior to it being a finished project. Research at any stage is presented by both the fellows and faculty and ranges from early ideas with no data having been obtained to well-conceived projects closer to completion that have residual issues related to design or statistics that the researcher would like assistance with and would benefit from sharing their project with the Division. Often the fellows, during their research year, will take advantage of these meetings as they move forward with their projects as another opportunity for feedback to help shape their research.