Emmanuel Wiertz

Emmanuel Wiertz  obtained a degree in Veterinary Medicine from Utrecht University in 1986. From 1987-1994, he was investigator and group leader at the Vaccine Development Unit of the National Institute of Health and the Environment in Bilthoven, The Netherlands. In 1993, he obtained a PhD at Utrecht University for his studies on T cell recognition of Neisseria meningitidis outer membrane proteins (awarded cum laude). He received training in immunology, virology and cell biology as an intern at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and as EMBO fellow at the laboratory of Prof. Hidde Ploegh at MIT, Cambrigde MA (1994-1996). After returning from the US, he briefly went back to the RIVM and subsequently was appointed professor of Medical Microbiology, in particular Experimental Virology, at the Leiden University Medical Center. In 2009, his lab moved to the University Medical Center in Utrecht. The Wiertz lab investigates virus-host interactions, with special interest in viral immune evasion mechanisms. This research is at the interface of virology, immunology and cell biology, a combination of disciplines that has facilitated the elucidation of a variety of fascinating immune evasion strategies employed by herpesviruses. More recently, the lab has adopted novel technologies such as genome-wide shRNA libraries and the CRISPR/Cas technology as powerful instruments to explore new avenues in host-pathogen research.