Rui Kong, PhD

Assistant Professor, Emory Vaccine Center
Assistant Professor, Emory Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Investigator, Emory National Primate Research Center
Distinguished Investigator, Georgia Research Alliance

2020/03 – Present  Assistant Professor Emory University
2019/07 – 2020/02 Staff Scientist Vaccine Research Center, NIAID, NIH
2016/12 – 2019/07 Research fellow Vaccine Research Center, NIAID, NIH
2012/08 – 2016/12 Postdoctoral fellow Vaccine Research Center, NIAID, NIH
2012/01 – 2012/07 Postdoctoral fellow University of Pennsylvania
2006/08 – 2011/12 Ph.D. University of Alabama at Birmingham
2002/09 – 2006/07 B.S. Tsinghua University, Beijing

Research Interests:

Research in our lab focuses on antibodies and vaccines against HIV-1 and other pathogens. We are interested in two questions: 1) how to consistently induce specific highly functional antibodies by vaccination, and 2) how to maintain the antibody responses above the level of protection for a long period of time. Specific areas of interest include 1) novel vaccine design strategies to induce broadly-reactive anti-HIV-1 neutralizing antibodies; 2) HIV-1 Envelope fusion peptide-directed antibodies elicited in infected and immunized subjects; and 3) mechanisms of antibody elicitation, maturation and duration in immunized individuals.