Dr David Wentworth

Dr. David Wentworth currently serves as Chief of the Virology, Surveillance, and Diagnosis Branch (VSDB) of the Influenza Division at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  He has been the Director of the National Influenza Center in the U.S. and the Collaborating Centre for Surveillance, Epidemiology and Control of Influenza at the CDC since April, 2019. He received a B.S. in Poultry Science, an M.S. in Veterinary Medicine, and a Ph.D. in Virology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (United States), where he specialized in the study of influenza viruses. He studied coronaviruses as a postdoctoral fellow, and later as an Instructor in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver (United States). He has conducted virological research since 1990 and has published over 200 papers and book chapters.

As Chief of VSDB, Dr. Wentworth leads the Influenza Division’s efforts to improve global influenza virus control, prevention, pandemic preparedness and response. VSDB’s work involves conducting comprehensive antigenic, phenotypic, genetic, antiviral sensitivity analysis and developing diagnostic tests.  The data generated and analyzed by VSDB is used to guide vaccine virus selection and this branch employs classical and recombinant approaches to generate candidate vaccine viruses that are used by manufacturers to produce vaccines against seasonal and/or pandemic influenza. As part of the CDC COVID-19 response Dr. Wentworth served in the Laboratory Task Force as lead of the Molecular Studies Team, which developed the Flu-SC2 multiplex real time RT-PCR assay, and as the co-lead and Lead of the Strain Surveillance and Emerging Variants Team, which conducts genomic and phenotypic characterization of emerging SARS-CoV-2 virus lineages.

Prior to joining CDC in 2014, Dr. Wentworth was Director of Viral Programs at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) from 2011 to 2014, where his studies focused on interspecies transmission, pathogenesis, viral evolution and vaccine development using synthetic genomic strategies. From 2002 to 2011, Dr. Wentworth was the Director of the Influenza Virus and Coronavirus Pathogenesis laboratory at the Wadsworth Center, NYSDOH, and an Assistant Professor at the State University of New York-Albany, where his laboratory studied interspecies transmission of influenza viruses and SARS-Coronavirus, genomic technologies, and experimental vaccine approaches.