Arunachalam Ramaiah, MS, PhD
Director
Division of Bioinformatics & Pathogen Genomics Center of Excellence 

Dr. Arunachalam Ramaiah is a Director of Bioinformatics & Pathogen Genomics Center of Excellence at Georgia Department of Public Health, United States. He has received his PhD jointly from MS University, India and Abo Akademi University, Finland, where he studied influenza A/H1N1 virus. After his doctoral research, Dr. Ramaiah had multiple postdoctoral research experiences at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore (bacterial genomics), U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta (tick metagenomics and vector-borne pathogens), and the Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford (food allergy and human TCR diversity). Then he served as Senior Scientist (Faculty) at Tata Institute of Genetics and Society (TIGS) at Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine (inStem), Bangalore and led a group of scientists to investigate SARS-CoV-2 and many other RNA viruses. During his tenure at TIGS, he spent two years as the Visiting Scientist at University of California (UC), San Diego and also served as the Assistant Project Scientist at the UC, Irvine. Most recently Dr. Ramaiah was a Group Leader (Bioinformatics) at the Milwaukee Public Health Laboratory, Wisconsin.
Dr. Ramaiah is a subject matter expert in the field of Bioinformatics, Pathogen Genomics, Host-Pathogen Interactions, and Genomics Epidemiology. He has an outstanding academic career partnering with researchers across the globe, CDC and WHO. Dr. Ramaiah’s work played a crucial role in implementation of genomics in interpreting emerging public health challenges in the US and globally, which were published in Cell and Nature groups, and other reputed journals in the field. He received several awards and pinnacle of these are prestigious ISID-New Investigator Award, DBT-Young Scientist Award, APHL-CDC Bioinformatics Postdoctoral Fellowship, and Centre for International Mobility Scholarship. He is an elected Fellow of the UK Royal Society of Public Health and serves as a member of many national and international societies. Dr. Ramaiah is an Academic Editor in PLoS ONE, Review Editor in Frontiers in Microbiology, Frontiers in Genetics and Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution journals, and also a reviewer for dozens of international peer-reviewed journals. 

Selected Publications:
​​Innate immune modulator screen identifies STING pathway activation as a strategy to inhibit multiple families of arbo and respiratory viruses. Cell Reports Medicine, 2023
Comparative analysis of molecular pathogenic mechanisms and antiviral development targeting old and new world hantaviruses. pre-print, 2023
Implementation and evaluation of the Clear Dx platform for sequencing SARS-CoV-2 genomes in a Public Health Laboratory. Microbiology Spectrum, 2023 
Genomic surveillance identifies SARS-CoV-2 transmission patterns in local university populations, Wisconsin, USA, 2020-2022. Microbial Genomics, 2023
Hippo signaling pathway activation during SARS-CoV-2 infection contributes to host antiviral response. PLOS Biology, 2022 
ORAI1 limits SARS-CoV-2 infection by regulating tonic type I interferon signaling. The Journal of Immunology, 2022
Hidden genomic features of an invasive malaria vector, Anopheles stephensi, revealed by a chromosome-level genome assembly. BMC Biology, 2021
SARS-CoV-2 infection rewires host cell metabolism and is potentially susceptible to mTORC1 inhibition, Nature Communications, 2021
Antiviral drug screen identifies DNA-damage response inhibitor as potent blocker of SARS-CoV-2 replication. Cell Reports, 2021
Efficient population modification gene-drive rescue system in the malaria mosquito Anopheles stephensi. Nature Communications, 2020
Use of the Ion Torrent PGM for determining the genomic sequences of Francisella and Coxiella-like endosymbionts and Rickettsia directly from hard ticks. Contemporary Acarology, 2019
Evidence for highly variable, region-specific patterns of T-cell epitope mutations accumulating in Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains. Frontiers in Immunology, 2019
Complexity of type-specific 56 kDa antigen CD4 T-cell epitopes of Orientia tsutsugamushi strains causing Scrub typhus in India. PLoS ONE, 2018
Comparative analysis of protein evolution in the genome of pre-epidemic and epidemic Zika virus. Infection, Genetics and Evolution, 2017
Adaptive evolution of a novel avian-origin influenza A/H7N9 virus. Genomics, 2014

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