Affiliation: Arizona State University

Dr. Jacobs is Professor of Virology, former Director of the School of Life Sciences, and a member of the Biodesign Center for Immunotherapy, Vaccines and Virotherapy at Arizona State University. The main interest of Dr. Jacobs’ lab is poxvirus: host interactions, in particular evasion of the innate immune interferon defenses by poxviruses. Most recently, we have shown that one of the ways that poxviruses evade the interferon system is by inhibiting induction of interferon-mediated necroptotic cell death.  Disabling of the immune evasion genes in vaccinia virus has allowed the generation of highly attenuated strains of vaccinia virus as improved vaccine vectors for diseases such as HIV, as well as viruses to potentially treat cancer. Dr. Jacobs was awarded the Arizona Governor’s Innovator of the Year Award in Academia for the work in vaccine development.

Dr. Jacobs received his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and did post-doctoral research at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before taking a faculty position at Arizona State University. Dr. Jacobs has been a member of the NIH Virology Study Section and has served on numerous biodefense- and vaccine-related study sections. He has been an active collaborator with Russian scientists at VECTOR, home of the Russian smallpox repository. Dr. Jacobs serves as Chair of the Arizona State University Institutional Biosafety Committee.

Dr. Jacobs’ teaching interests include HIV prevention education to lay audiences. In this regard, Dr. Jacobs teaches a highly regarded interdisciplinary HIV class at ASU and spends several weeks each year in Africa teaching HIV prevention. Dr. Jacobs has served on the Board of Directors of two non-profit organizations dealing with public health, Aunt Rita’s Foundation and HEAL, International.