PNNL

Amy Sims is a Senior Research Scientist in the Chemical and Biological Signatures Division of the National Security Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington. She earned her PhD from Vanderbilt University Medical Center and worked with Professor Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) during her postdoctoral studies. Dr. Sims spent an additional 15 years at UNC as faculty in a continued collaboration with Dr. Baric to understand the host pathogen interactions of highly pathogenic human coronaviruses and to identify novel vaccination strategies and therapeutic targets.

Dr. Sims has published over 50 peer-reviewed publications on a range of topics, including antivirals that are efficacious against human coronaviruses, using reverse genetics platforms to characterize coronavirus protein functions, and mechanisms used by human coronaviruses to regulate host innate immune responses.

Dr. Sims joined PNNL in January 2020 to continue a decade-long collaboration on the use of computational modeling and bioinformatics approaches in analyses of kinetic ’omics data from studies of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2003 (SARS-CoV 2003) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infected samples. The overall goal of her research is to understand the detailed molecular mechanisms by which CoVs manipulate host pathways and evade the innate immune response to enhance viral replication and spread, as well as to identify new host targets to reduce the disease severity caused by human CoV.

• The overall goal of her research is to understand the detailed molecular mechanisms by which CoVs manipulate host pathways and evade the innate immune response to enhance viral replication and spread, as well as to identify new host targets to reduce the disease severity caused by human CoV.

• Microbiology
• Primary cells
• Systems biology
• Virology

• Doctor of Philosophy, Virology, Vanderbilt University
• Bachelor of Science, Molecular Biology, University of Alabama at Birmingham