Shira Weingarten-Gabbay

Shira Weingarten-Gabbay is an Assistant Professor of Microbiology at Harvard Medical School and heads the Laboratory of Systems Virology. Her research integrates virology, immunology, and systems biology to decode viral genomes and understand virus-immune system interactions. She has developed high-throughput methods like Massively Parallel Ribosome Profiling (MPRP) to identify novel viral ORFs and explore their roles in antigen presentation and immune evasion.

Her work focuses on uncovering 'hidden' viral proteins derived from non-canonical open reading frames (ORFs), revealing their impact on T cell immunity. Notable contributions include identifying thousands of new viral ORFs across ~700 human viruses, discovering SARS-CoV-2 HLA-I and HLA-II peptides from unconventional ORFs, and characterizing internal ribosome entry sites (IRES) in viral and human genomes. These studies have advanced understanding of viral translation mechanisms, transcriptional regulation, and immune targeting strategies.

Publications span Science, Cell, Nature, and other top journals, with key findings featured in media outlets like The New York Times and BBC Science in Action. Her interdisciplinary approach bridges molecular virology, computational biology, and synthetic biology to address fundamental questions in viral pathogenesis and host defense.