Rate My Professor Sharon Isern

Sharon Isern is a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida Gulf Coast University, where she joined the faculty in 2004. She holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Following her doctorate, she completed postdoctoral fellowships in molecular virology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Tulane University. Throughout her career at FGCU, Isern has taught courses in virology, cell biology, and honors virus hunters programs focused on phage discovery and genomics. She has served as Course Director for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute SEA-PHAGES Program Phage Discovery Workshops and led undergraduate research initiatives, including studies on lysogenic phages in biological sciences.

Isern's research centers on molecular virology, with a focus on viral entry pathways, virus entry inhibitors, vaccine development, and the immunology, epidemiology, surveillance, prevention, and treatment of mosquito-transmitted viruses such as dengue and Zika. Her laboratory has explored topics including dengue virus antibody enhancement of Zika infection, genomic epidemiology of Zika introductions, and the use of viruses to combat blue-green algae blooms. She has secured research funding from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, and U.S. Department of Agriculture. Key publications include 'Dengue virus antibodies enhance Zika virus infection' (2016), 'Travel Surveillance and Genomics Uncover a Hidden Zika Outbreak during the Waning Epidemic' (2019), 'Capturing sequence diversity in metagenomes with comprehensive and scalable probe design' (2019), 'Wolbachia wStri Blocks Zika Virus Growth at Two Independent Stages of Viral Replication' (2018), and 'Engineering a Universal Dengue Virus Vaccine using a Virus-Like Particle Scaffold' (2022). Her scholarship has accumulated over 3,600 citations across 53 publications. Isern contributes to the field as a member of the National Institutes of Health Vaccines Against Microbial Diseases Study Section.