Dr. Michael G. Kurilla, Director of the Office of BioDefense Research Affairs and Associate Director for BioDefense Product Development, NIAID

John F. Morton is the Strategic Advisor for DomPrep. He is also the Homeland Security Team Lead for the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR). A member of the DomPrep team since its founding, he has served as managing editor for writer assignments and interviewer for scores of DomPrep audio interviews.

Michael G Kurilla, MD-PhD did his undergraduate work at CalTech, majoring in Chemistry. He completed his MD-PhD at Duke University. He took his postgraduate medical training in Pathology at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA and postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Elliott Kieff at Harvard Medical School where he was both a Life Sciences Research Foundation Fellow and Markey Scholar. He moved to the University of Virginia in Pathology and managed both a research lab as well as two clinical labs. He took over managing an Antimicrobial Drug Discovery group at Dupont Pharmaceuticals which was later purchased by Bristol-Myers Squibb. He moved to Wyeth as Associate Director of Anti-infectives and finally arrived at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) as a Medical Officer. In 2005, he was named as Director of the Office of BioDefense Research Affairs and Associate Director for BioDefense Product Development within NIAID. Over the years, his research activities have spanned the range of infectious disease including virology involving numerous RNA and DNA viruses, immunology, bacteriology, and mycology. He has been involved with drug discovery and development from targetentification through to clinical trial design.