Dr Tadaki Suzuki

Dr Tadaki Suzuki, MD, PhD, is the Director of the Department of Pathology at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID) in Tokyo, Japan. He obtained his medical degree from Hokkaido University School of Medicine in 2002 and completed a doctorate in 2006 from the same institution. He pursued postdoctoral studies at the Hokkaido University Research Center for Zoonosis Control from 2006 to 2009. After his training, Dr Suzuki joined NIID, focusing on infectious disease pathology. From 2015 to 2016, he served as a guest researcher in infectious disease pathology at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, United States. He was appointed Director of the Department of Pathology at NIID in 2020. 

Dr Suzuki’s research utilizes animal models and human pathological tissue samples to investigate the pathogenic mechanisms of respiratory viral infections and zoonotic viral diseases, including influenza, COVID-19, and severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS), an emerging tick-borne viral hemorrhagic fever. He has also conducted immunological research aimed at developing an intranasal inactivated influenza vaccine. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Suzuki participated in multiple studies on the virological and serological characteristics of COVID-19. His contributions included work on the First Few Hundred (FF100) studies and nationwide COVID-19 seroepidemiological studies in Japan.