Dr. Zandrea Ambrose is currently a tenured Associate Professor and the Vice Chair for Graduate Education in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She also has a secondary appointment in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology in the School of Public Health. Dr. Ambrose is a member of the Pitt Center for HIV Protein Interactions, Center for Evolutionary Biology and Medicine, the Center for Vaccine Research, and the Hillman Cancer Virology Program. She also serves as the Director of the Graduate Program in Microbiology and Immunology, the largest PhD program in the School of Medicine. Recently she was selected to serve on the Subcommittee on Graduate and Postdoctoral Education for the American Society of Microbiology.

After graduating magna cum laude from Ohio Wesleyan University, Dr. Ambrose received her PhD in Pathobiology at the University of Washington, where she studied the early events of HIV infection and the efficacy of a prime-boost vaccine to induce mucosal immunity in an animal model. She was awarded the Warren G. Magnuson Scholarship and Outstanding Student of the Year in the UW School of Public Health and Community Medicine. As a postdoctoral and research fellow at the National Cancer Institute, she developed a novel animal model to study HIV-1 drug resistance and latency/persistence during combination antiretroviral therapy. In addition, she performed several molecular and cellular virology projects to study early infection events of the HIV-1 life cycle (mainly involving reverse transcriptase and capsid), which could be exploited as novel drug targets, and mechanisms of drug resistance. At NCI, she received numerous travel scholarships and two Fellow Awards for Research Excellence.
As a faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, her laboratory continues to use animal models to study HIV-1 transmission, evolution, co-infections (M. tuberculosis and hepatitis B virus), and therapeutic interventions. Dr. Ambrose’s laboratory also continues to study the role of host protein interactions of HIV as well as SARS-CoV-2 during infection of cells.

Dr. Ambrose is comfortable speaking about virology, applying for graduate school in the hard sciences, graduate school vs. medical school, and different jobs in the hard sciences. Additionally, Dr. Ambrose is interested in working with Microbiology, Biology, and Pre-Med students in the following areas:

• Speaking with a student virtually or on the phone
• Presenting to a class in-person
• Presenting to a student organization
• Conducting a virtual webinar
• Assisting OWU Alumni