Vanessa Sperandio, Ph.D.
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Vanessa Sperandio, Ph.D., is Chair of the Department of Medical °®¶¹´«Ã½ and Immunology and Robert Turell Professor in infectious diseases at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Previously, she was the Jane and Bud Smith Distinguished Chair in Medicine and professor in UT Southwestern Departments of °®¶¹´«Ã½ and Biochemistry. She received her bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. at UNICAMP in Brazil and did her post-doctoral training at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Sperandio was a Latin-American Pew fellow in biomedical sciences, an Ellison Foundation New Scholar and a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases. She has been a National Academy Kavli Frontiers of Science fellow since 2007. She served on the national advisory committee of the Pew Latin-American Fellows Program and Projeto Serrapilheira in Brazil. She served on the advisory committee for the Burroughs Wellcome Fund’s Investigators in the Pathogenesis-of-Infectious Diseases.
She has served as Chair of ASM Press, Chair of ASM's Division D, member of the ASM Education Awards Committee and member and Chair of the ASM Microbe Program Committee HMB-track. She currently serves on the editorial boards of mBio and Infection and Immunity and recently served on the Journal of Bacteriology editorial board (term ended in 2024).
In 2013, Sperandio was elected a fellow of the American Academy of °®¶¹´«Ã½ (AAM) and is currently serving as Chair of the AAM Academy Governors. She received the 2015 ASM Eli-Lilly and Company-Elanco Research Award and was a winner of the GSK- Discovery-Fast-track challenge in 2014. She was elected as an American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) fellow in 2022.
Sperandio’s research investigates chemical, stress and nutritional signaling at the interface among the mammalian host, beneficial microbiota and invading bacterial pathogens. The main tenet of her research is the study of how bacterial cells sense several mammalian neurotransmitters leading to rewiring and reprogramming of bacterial transcription toward host and niche adaptation. She has also identified several bacterial receptors to mammalian neurotransmitters and reported that pathogens hijack these interkingdom signaling systems to promote virulence expression. She also translated these basic science concepts into strategies to develop novel approaches to antimicrobial therapy.
Sperandio was a Latin-American Pew fellow in biomedical sciences, an Ellison Foundation New Scholar and a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases. She has been a National Academy Kavli Frontiers of Science fellow since 2007. She served on the national advisory committee of the Pew Latin-American Fellows Program and Projeto Serrapilheira in Brazil. She served on the advisory committee for the Burroughs Wellcome Fund’s Investigators in the Pathogenesis-of-Infectious Diseases.
She has served as Chair of ASM Press, Chair of ASM's Division D, member of the ASM Education Awards Committee and member and Chair of the ASM Microbe Program Committee HMB-track. She currently serves on the editorial boards of mBio and Infection and Immunity and recently served on the Journal of Bacteriology editorial board (term ended in 2024).
In 2013, Sperandio was elected a fellow of the American Academy of °®¶¹´«Ã½ (AAM) and is currently serving as Chair of the AAM Academy Governors. She received the 2015 ASM Eli-Lilly and Company-Elanco Research Award and was a winner of the GSK- Discovery-Fast-track challenge in 2014. She was elected as an American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) fellow in 2022.
Sperandio’s research investigates chemical, stress and nutritional signaling at the interface among the mammalian host, beneficial microbiota and invading bacterial pathogens. The main tenet of her research is the study of how bacterial cells sense several mammalian neurotransmitters leading to rewiring and reprogramming of bacterial transcription toward host and niche adaptation. She has also identified several bacterial receptors to mammalian neurotransmitters and reported that pathogens hijack these interkingdom signaling systems to promote virulence expression. She also translated these basic science concepts into strategies to develop novel approaches to antimicrobial therapy.