Bertram Jacobs

Biography

Dr. Jacobs is Professor of Virology in the School of Life Sciences, and a member of the ASU-Banner Neurodegenerative Disease Center in the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University.  The main interest of Dr. Jacobs’ lab is poxvirus: host interactions, in particular evasion of the innate immune interferon defenses by poxviruses. Disabling of the immune evasion genes in vaccinia virus has allowed the generation of highly attenuated strains of vaccinia virus as improved vaccine vectors for diseases such as HIV and mpox, as well as viruses to potentially treat cancer.  Dr. Jacobs was awarded the Governor’s Innovator of the Year Award in Academia for the work in vaccine development.

Dr. Jacobs received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and did post-doctoral research at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before taking a faculty position at Arizona State University.  Dr. Jacobs has been a member of the NIH Virology Study Section and has served on numerous biodefense-related study sections.  He has been an active collaborator with Russian scientists at VECTOR, home of the Russian smallpox repository.  Dr. Jacobs serves as Chair of the Arizona State University Institutional Biosafety Committee and is former Director of the School of Life Sciences.

Dr. Jacobs’ teaching interests include HIV prevention education to lay audiences.  In this regard, Dr. Jacobs teaches a highly regarded interdisciplinary HIV class at ASU and spends several weeks each year in Africa teaching HIV prevention. Dr. Jacobs has served on the Board of Directors of two non-profit organizations dealing with public health, Aunt Rita’s Foundation and HEAL, International.