Biography

Kirsten E. Lyke is a board-certified, infectious diseases physician, and translational scientist specializing in tropical diseases and global health epidemiology, immunology, and vaccinology. She is a Professor of Medicine in the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and is co-Director of the Malaria Research Program. She has broad experience in field and domestic trial application including several recent trials examining the protective efficacy against malaria of monoclonal antibodies. In the capacity as a clinical trialist for global epidemic and pandemic outbreaks, she has conducted numerous trials including the first-in-human malaria PfSPZ Vaccine, Ebola Zaire vaccine, Zika DNA vaccine, and the Pfizer/BioNTech SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine. She conceived of and is the Chair of the national Mix and Match study on heterologous and homologous SARS-CoV-2 booster vaccines. She is a global leader for the Plasmodium falciparum controlled human malaria infection and dengue human infection models, having optimized the methodology, employed sophisticated diagnostics enabling study conduct, optimized parenteral delivery and heterologous strain experimental challenges. She is also a critical care infectious diseases attending and physician at the University of Maryland Medical Center. She was inducted into the National Academy of Medicine in 2024.