Matthew Gagne is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Vaccine Research Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. He received his Ph.D. from the Microbiology Department at Boston University School of Medicine. His doctoral research focused on the mechanisms of HIV latency and persistence, for which he received an NIH-funded F31 training grant. After joining the NIH, Dr. Gagne participated in Operation Warp Speed and helped lead the testing of COVID-19 vaccine candidates in preclinical animal models. His research has contributed to regulatory authorization of COVID-19 vaccines and helped to establish the necessity of boosting. More recently, his work has focused on the limitations of variant-specific vaccines due to the effects of antigenic imprinting from prior immunizations. He has been the recipient of multiple awards including the 2021 NIH Merit Award and the 2021 and 2022 NIH Director’s Award.
