Michael Vajdy
Co-founder, President and CSO
EpitoGenesis, Inc.
USA
Biography
Dr. Vajdy is a Mucosal Immunologist with over 20 years of direct experience in designing mucosal and systemic adjuvants and vaccines, studying mucosal and systemic B and T cell immune induction mechanisms and long-term immunological memory. Following Ph.D. studentship at Goteborg University under the supervision of Dr. Nils Lycke, a prominent Mucosal Immunologist, Dr. Vajdy completed his first post doctoral fellowship with Dr. Katherine Knight, then President of the American Association of Immunologists. Dr. Vajdy completed his second post doctoral fellowship with Dr. Marian Neutra, an expert in Mucosal Biology and M cells of the intestinal Peyer’s patches. Dr. Vajdy was recruited to Chiron Corporation and Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics where he remained for 9.5 years with increasing responsibilities including project leadership for a vaccine manufacturing platform technology. He also held simultaneous academic positions as Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor with the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and visitingassociate professor at Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, University of California, Davis. He was also a Faculty Member with the Graduate Group, Department of Comparative Pathology, University of California, Davis. In these capacities, he trained a Ph.D. student and 3 post-doctoral fellows and wrote collaborative NIH grants. Dr. Vajdy has authored 50 papers and manuscripts, 45 of which have been published and the remaining are submitted or are in manuscript form. Dr. Vajdy is the editor of a book entitled “immunity against mucosal pathogens†(Springer, 2008). Dr. Vajdy was the PI and recipient of an R21 grant (R21 AI50430-01). He was also an investigator on several multi-project NIH grants. Dr. Vajdy is the inventor of 6 patents owned by Novartis Vaccines as well as one patent owned fully by EpitoGenesis Inc.
Research Interest
Mucosal Immunology, Vaccines