David H. O'Connor, PhD

UW Medical Foundation Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

Dr. David O’Connor’s laboratory studies virus-host interactions, with an emphasis on RNA viruses. His laboratory currently has 6 major, overlapping research areas: simian arteriviruses pathogenesis; host genomics; HIV/SIV pathogenesis; viral immunology; immunomodulation by pegiviruses; and understanding congenital Zika virus. In the last five years, they made particularly noteworthy contributions to the integration of host genomics with RNA virus pathogenesis and the study of Zika virus. Dr. O’Connor’s first VTG predoc trainee Adam Ericsen published the first use of whole genome sequencing to explore the basis of spontaneous HIV/SIV control (Genome Biol. 2014, PMID: 25418588).  He also first authored a study looking at the role of microbial translocation on HIV infection using SIV as a model virus (Ericsen et al., PLoS Pathogens 2016, PMID: 27926931) and contributed to another 9 published studies. Adam is now on the faculty at Emory University and the Yerkes National Primate Research Center (hired after a very brief time as a postdoctoral researcher). Incoming VTG predoc trainee Anna Heffron is using ultradense peptide arrays to understand protective immunity to Zika virus in macaques, building on the work the D. O’Connor laboratory has done to develop the first experimental macaque model for Zika virus. Dr. O’Connor collaborates extensively with UW-Madison virologists. In particular, Drs. Friedrich, O’Connor, Reynolds, Evans, and S. O’Connor all have salaried effort on one another’s active grants. Additionally, Dr. O’Connor has co-authored collaborative manuscripts with Drs. Goldberg, Kawaoka, and Westergaard in the past five years.  Dr. O’Connor’s lab is supported primarily by 3 NIAID R01s for which he is PI, and the Primate Center P51.