Robert Seder

Dr. Robert Seder, M.D. is serving as VRC’s Acting Chief Medical Officer, Acting Associate Director, and Chief of the Cellular Immunology Section. Dr. Seder received his B.A. in Natural Science at Johns Hopkins University in 1981 and his M.D. at Tufts University in 1986 and completed his residency in internal medicine at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. Dr. Seder did his postdoctoral training at NIAID with Dr. William Paul. He is currently Chief of the Cellular Immunology Section in the Vaccine Research Center in the NIAID, NIH. Dr. Seder's laboratory has focused on the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which vaccines and adjuvants mediate protective immunity in mouse, and non-human primate models of HIV, Malaria, Tuberculosis and cancer. Dr. Seder has translated his scientific discoveries and led the first in human clinical studies using intravenous vaccination to generate protective immunity with an attenuated malaria vaccine. Dr. Seder led a series of studies in a non-human primate vaccine model of SARS-CoV-2 infection using the mRNA vaccine co-developed by the VRC and Moderna, work which provided the proof of principle for immunogenicity and protection to facilitate the initiation of the Phase 3 clinical trial with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

Robert Seder is a 2023 Falling Walls Winner in the Life Sciences category.