George Mason University
Office of Alumni Affairs
Johnson Center, Room 122
4400 University Drive
Fairfax, VA 22030

Phone: (703) 993-8696
Fax: (703) 993-8799

Jeffery Taubenberger

Jeffery Taubenberger, MD, PhD (BS Biology ’82)

Jeffery Taubenberger is not just an infectious-disease scientist, he’s a pandemic detective—the Sherlock Holmes of influenza. In 2005, Taubenberger solved a medical mystery, identifying the specific cause of the 1918 pandemic that killed nearly 50 million people. The culprit: an influenza virus that began in birds and adapted to humans.

Pandemics occur every 30 to 40 years on average—the last one was in 1968—so Taubenberger’s research is more than mere “historical curiosity,” as he puts it. “We’re using it to investigate what mutations allow such viruses to adapt to humans and how it causes disease,” says Taubenberger, a senior investigator with the National Institutes of Health’s Laboratory of Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland. “This information can be crucial for developing new drugs and vaccines.”

His papers on the 1918 virus were widely acclaimed—Taubenberger was ABC News’ “Person of the Week” in October 2005—but his motivation is the simple exhilaration of discovery. As a child, he was always interested in biology, a passion that grew in eighth grade when he met William Drohan, a scientist from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). By 10th grade, Taubenberger was doing science fair projects in Drohan’s lab. “I was looking at the possible genetic components to cancer,” he says (you know, typical high-school boy stuff). Taubenberger arrived at Mason as a 16-year-old freshman, played oboe with Mason’s orchestra while working part time for NCI, and composed a piece that the orchestra performed his senior year. Someday he hopes to return and take music classes, but until then, you’ll find him in the lab, performing research that could save millions of lives.