Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

The laboratory has been developing and validating the bioinformatics pipelines for analysis of meningococcal outbreaks. Dr. Marjuki and his team will provide training in genomics of meningococcal and influenzae infection.

Dr. Tondella is the chief of the Pertussis and Diphtheria Laboratory, and an international expert in pertussis genomics. Using whole genome sequencing (WGS) and other methods, Dr. Tondella has been monitoring the rapid emergence of pertactin-deficient B. pertussis in the U.S., which may be in part responsible for the recent reemergence of pertussis. She is an international expert on laboratory aspects of pertussis. She is the principal investigator of the Latin America Pertussis Surveillance Project in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organization, Sabin Vaccine Institute, and Ministries of Health from Panama, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and Colombia. She has broad experience in the development and evaluation of molecular methods—including cloning, DNA sequencing, and genomics—for diagnosis and subtyping bacterial pathogens. Dr. Tondella’s lab will provide training in pertussis genomics.

Dr. Litvintseva is the Team Lead of the Fungal Research Laboratory in the Mycotic Diseases Branch at CDC. She provides leadership and support for fungal disease activities nationally and internationally and has been studying fungal diseases for nearly 20 years. Her group performs research on molecular epidemiology and novel detection and diagnostic methods for fungal diseases. She has collaborated with Dr. Nelesh Govender in the area of mycotic infections, most recently C. auris. Dr. Litvintseva will oversee the mycotic diseases genomics training that will occur at the CDC.