Pacific Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Research
John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawai'i at Manoa
Director: Dr. Richard Yanagihara

ADMINISTRATION

Richard Yanagihara, M.D., M.P.H.
Director

Even before the term emerging infectious diseases became fashionable, Dr. Yanagihara had been exploring factors that contribute to the emergence or re-emergence of microbial diseases. These explorations have taken the form of problem-based, disease-oriented, long-term, high-risk, multidisciplinary, opportunistic investigations of medically urgent phenomena of worldwide relevance, conducted largely in the context of exploiting naturally occurring paradigms of high-incidence ‘place diseases’ among populations isolated by virtue of genetics, culture and/or geography. His scholarly contributions consist of more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. Among his notable landmark achievements have been the discovery and characterization of genetically distinct variants of human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) in remote Melanesian populations in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, and the elucidation of the worldwide epizootiology and molecular phylogeny of hantaviruses, including the highly lethal, sigmodontine rodent-borne HPS-causing hantaviruses.

By virtue of his multidisciplinary training in infectious diseases and public health, his clinical and field experience in Micronesia, Melanesia and Southeast Asia, and his wide-ranging laboratory research experience and long-standing research interest in emerging infectious diseases, Dr. Yanagihara possesses the necessary knowledge and skills to lead this complex center. Prior to being assigned to UHM through an interagency personnel agreement in 1995, he was a Section Chief and On-site Project Officer of the NINDS primate facility and BSL-3 laboratories in Frederick, Maryland, for 10 years, where he supervised a scientific staff of five or six intramural investigators and a support staff of 15 animal handlers. As director of the Retrovirology Research Laboratory from 1995 to 2002, Dr. Yanagihara developed and directed a multidisciplinary research program on human retroviruses and emerging microbial pathogens. Since 2000, Dr. Yanagihara has served as the Director of the RCMI Program, an institutional infrastructure-development award from NCRR. He is also Co-Director of the Pacific Research Center for Marine Biomedicine, funded by NIEHS and NSF.

Cori Watanabe, MBA
Center Coordinator