Toxoplasma Gondii: The Model Apicomplexan. Perspectives and Methods

Louis M. Weiss M.D., M.P.H is Professor of Medicine (Division of Infectious Diseases) and Professor of Pathology (Division of Parasitology and Tropical Medicine) of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York. Dr. Weiss received his M.D. and M.P.H degrees from the Johns Hopkins University in 1982. He then completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago and a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Following this fellowship, he joined the faculty at Einstein where he is currently a Professor of Pathology and Medicine. His laboratory group has an active research program on parasitic diseases with a research focus on Toxoplasma gondii, the Microsporidia and Trypanosoma cruzi. Dr. Weiss is the author of over 200 publications and the editor of 3 books on parasitology. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, Infectious Disease Society of America and the American Academy of Microbiology. Dr. Weiss is the Co-Director of the Einstein Global Health Center.

Dr. Kami Kim is a physician-scientist who joined the USF faculty in 2017 as a Professor of Internal Medicine (Infectious Diseases and International Medicine) and Professor of Global Health. Her laboratory focuses upon understanding the pathogenesis of toxoplasmosis and malaria, parasitic diseases of global significance. The Toxoplasma projects use a multidisciplinary systems biology approach to understand how the parasite senses and responds to changes in its host. Using a combination of epigenomics, genetics and proteomics, her group is studying how the parasite transitions from the pathogenic tachyzoite form to the persistent bradyzoite form. She is investigating the epigenetic and genetic factors that govern the host response to parasites. Dr. Kim is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the Infectious Disease Society of America as well as an elected member of the Association for American Physicians and the American Society for Clinical Investigation.