Lilin Lai, MD

Senior Research Specialist

Dr. Lai is a senior scientist at Emory Vaccine Center with expertise in microbiology, immunology and vaccinology. Dr. Lai received her master’s degree in microbiology and Immunology in Tongji Medical Collage, Wuhan, China and MD degree in University of Berne, Switzerland. After postdoctoral work studying cytomegalovirus (CMV) assembly and viral factors related to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) replication, and design and evaluate HIV vaccine candidates using non-human primate models, Dr. Lai then worked at Emory Vaccine Center and focused on the immunogenicity aspects of clinical vaccine trials against infectious diseases, such as human papillomavirus (HPV), influenza virus, norovirus, smallpox, tuberculosis, HIV, Ebola, and Zika virus as well as immune responses / pathogenesis of emerging infectious diseases such as Ebola and Zika. Dr. Lai played a major role in lab leadership within the Emory University VTEU team 2011-2018), overseeing the successful completion of several immunological studies for VTEU-sponsored vaccine trials, including for H3N2v and H7N9 influenza vaccine studies, an HPV vaccine trial aimed to determine long term memory responses, and studies assessing immune responses of emerging infectious diseases such as Ebola and Zika. Since 2019, Dr. Lai have been worked in multiple projects on evaluating neutralizing antibody and memory B cell responses to SARS-COV-2 and its variants induced by COVID-19 infection and COVID-19 vaccine immunization.