Advisory Board and Editors Immunology
Sheetal Verma
Dr. Sheetal Verma is an expert in the field of infectious disease immunology, and works primarily on host immune responses to Tuberculosis (TB). She has published extensively on characterization and validation of immuno-pathological pathways that modulate disease outcomes in TB.
In her current role, she is responsible for overseeing the implementation of scientific protocols and research operations at multiple international sites as part of the RePORT International Consortium. Dr. Verma works closely with the Data Management and Operations Center of RePORT International in coordinating cross-institutional regulatory processes, biorepository management and supervising assigned staff at international research laboratories.
She is a co-investigator on multiple NIH/NIAID grants and is a valued member of the Rutgers NJMS community, due to her skills in the practice and teaching of research in high containment Biosafety Level 3 Laboratories (BSL3). In this capacity, she leads training of new scientists in containment procedures, performing key experiments and designing applicable protocols for working with animal models.
Dr. Verma obtained her MS degree from Case Western Reserve University in 2010 and her PhD from Rutgers University - New Jersey Medical School in 2017.
Shailendra Kumar Verma
Dr. Shailendra Kumar Verma is currently a postdoctoral fellow at La Jolla Institute for Immunology, California, USA. He pursued his Ph.D. from Central Drug Research Institute, India in the field of vaccine immunology. Dr. Verma joined DRDE, and had been a scientist since 2005 to 2021. His major research area focused onto the vaccine and therapeutic development against infectious diseases. He has published more than 25 publications in peer reviewed journals of highly repute. Dr. Verma has more than 15 years of research experience in infection and immunology. His present research at La Jolla institute for Immunology is focused onto the vaccine/therapeutic development against SARS-CoV-2 and ZIKA virus.
Annamaria Vezzani
Head of Experimental Neurology, Department of Neuroscience, Mario Negri Institute. Associate Editor of Basic Science for Epilepsia. Former Chair of the Commission on Neurobiology of International League Against Epilepsy. Recipient of the Research Recognition Award for translational research in 2009 by the American Epilepsy Society.
Alejandro V Villarino
Assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine. Specialist in cytokine biology and STAT signaling.
Henning Walczak
Recipient of the Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award (2011) and an ERC Advanced Grant (2011). Director of the European Workshop on Cell Death (EWCD) Charity.
Shibiao Wan
Dr. Shibiao Wan is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Anatomy, and the Co-Director for the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology (BISB) PhD Program at University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). He is also an Assistant Professor (courtesy) in the Department of Biostatistics at UNMC.
With more than 15 years of experience in machine learning, bioinformatics, and computational biology, Dr. Wan has published >50 articles in top-tiered journals such as Genome Research, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Circulation Research, Briefings in Bioinformatics, and Bioinformatics. Dr. Wan is the Editor-in-Chief for Current Proteomics, and an Editorial Board Member for a series of prestigious journals such as Briefings in Functional Genomics, Heliyon, BMC Bioinformatics, International Journal of Microbiology, PeerJ Computer Science, BioMed Research International, and Computational and Mathematical Methods, and a guest associate editor for multiple high-impact journals.
Dr Wan is a TPC member for >20 machine learning related international conferences including IEEE ICTAI. Dr. Wan is also a reviewer for >70 prestigious journals including Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methods, Nature Communications, Nature Computational Science, Science Advances, Nucleic Acids Research, Advanced Science, Cancer Research, Genome Biology, and Genome Medicine. Dr. Wan has received a number of accolades including the Springer Nature Editor of Distinction Award in 2025 by Springer Nature, the New Investigator Award in 2024 by UNMC, the FIRST Award in 2023 by Nebraska EPSCoR, the Outstanding Young Alumni Award in 2022 by HK PolyU as well as the Global Peer Review Awards (top 1%) in “Cross-Field” and “Biology and Biochemistry” in 2019 by Clarivate. Dr. Wan is a member of AACR, ISCB and ACM and an IEEE Senior Member.
Hao Wu
Hao Wu is a patent scientist in an oncology-focused biotechnology company, Exelixis, Inc. She obtained her Ph.D. in molecular biology from Rowan University (previously known as the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) – Stratford Campus). With hands-on knowledge in various aspects of biology, including molecular biology, cell biology, biochemistry, immunology, neuroscience, oncology, Hao has worked on inventions spanning a broad range of technologies, for example, biologics, antibodies, biomarkers, diagnostics, cell therapy, gene therapy, and sequencing.
Jiyang Yu
Dr. Jiyang Yu's research is focused on systems biology, systems immunology, single-cell systems biology, immuno-oncology, translational oncology and functional genomics. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Zhejiang University, China. In 2008-2012, he was trained in Dr. Andrea Califano’s laboratory at Columbia University and earned his PhD degree in Biomedical Informatics.