Person Amy Sims

Amy Sims, PhD is a Biomedical Scientist in the Chemical and Biological Signatures Division of the National Security Directorate at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, WA. She earned her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University Medical Center and worked with Ralph Baric, PhD 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 pathogenesis of highly pathogenic human coronaviruses and to identify novel vaccination strategies and therapeutic targets. Dr. Sims has recently joined PNNL to continue a decade long collaboration to use computational modeling and bioinformatics approaches to analyze kinetic ‘omics datasets from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2003 (SARS-CoV 2003) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infected samples. The overall goal is to understand how CoV manipulate host pathways and processes to evade the innate immune response and to enhance viral replication and spread.