Donald J. Alcendor, PhD, MS

Donald J. Alcendor, PhD, MS

Scientific Advisory Committee

Associate Professor, Center for AIDS Health Disparities Research, Division of Microbiology & Immunology, Physiology & Obstetrics & Gynecology, Meharry Medical College

Former Special Government Employee (SGE) Food & Drug Administration Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), Consultant to the FDA Antiviral Drugs Advisory now Antimicrobial Advisory Committee  

Expert Advisory Panel member for the American Lung Association COVID-19 Action Initiative. Anti-Viral and Immunomodulating Therapies, Health Promotions and Pandemic Related Social, Behavioral and Racial Disparities             

Associate Professor (Adjunct), Department of Pathology Microbiology and Immunology, Division of Infectious Diseases, Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Dr. Alcendor completed his post-graduate studies at the NIH and Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore Maryland in departments of Molecular Virology and Viral Oncology respectively. As a graduate student at the University of California at Davis he received the Patricia Roberts Harris Graduate Fellowship, was a University of California Davis Mentorship Fellow, a National Heart Lung and Blood Institute Pre-doctoral Fellow, a National Heart Lung and Blood Institute Post-doctoral Fellow, a Floyd and Mary Schwall, Dissertation Fellow, a National Heart Lung and Blood Institute Spring Fellow, and a recipient of the Merck Special Service Award.

Dr. Alcendor was also a research consultant to the Viral Vector Core Laboratory in Viral Oncology, at Johns Hopkins, and was a Cytomegalovirus Expert for the FDA, Division of Vaccine Injury and Compensation Program for the Department of Health and Human Services in Rockville, Maryland. He has also served as a summer mentor for the Leadership Alliance for the American Society of Microbiology. He was a mentor for the FDA Office of Minority Health, Health Disparities Fellowship. He was also selected as a Minority Scholar in Cancer Research by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). He received the Nashville Business Journal Health Care Hero Award in Research.  He was selected as a member of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) list of distinguish minority microbiologist. He was also a committee member on the independent Research Evaluation and Decision Panel (REDP) for the AIDS Cancer and Specimen Resource of the NCI-AIDS Malignancy Program. He was a Brain-on-chip investigator in partnership with Vanderbilt and the Cleveland Clinic. He was funded to develop the Blood-Retinal-Barrier on a Chip. He is a Research Liaison for the FDA Office of Minority Health with Meharry Medical College.  He was a consultant and voting member on the FDA Antimicrobial Drug Advisory Committee. He was selected as an expert grant reviewer for the Florida Department of Health’s Biomedical Research Programs through the Oak Ridge Associated Universities and Department of Energy.  He is an Associate Director of the Vanderbilt Short Term Training Program for minority students. He is also a member of the Vanderbilt Pre3 Initiative (Preventing Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes & Prematurity). He is a voting member of Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (CTSA) Scientific Review Committee. He is Technical Advisory Group member for the Tennessee Health Care Innovation Initiative Episodes of Care, “HIV Outpatient Skin and Soft Tissue Infection (SSTI) Episodes of care,” for the State of Tennessee.  He was the Principal Investigator and Director of the Community Outreach Core for Project SAVED, a CDC funded HIV capacity building assistance initiative. He was selected as an expert advisory panel member for the American Lung Association COVID-19 Action Initiative. He was the director of the Zika Pathogenesis Working Group based at Meharry. He was an Associate Director for the Continuum of Care Scientific working group for the Tennessee Center for AIDS Research and he organized the 1st HIV/AIDS Awareness Summit for Teens sponsored by the HIV Center at Meharry.  Finally, he is a member of several editorial boards and committees associated with infectious disease and has been an invited speaker to key national science conferences.

Page last updated: May 2, 2024

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