Michael S. Ascher, M.D., FACP
Adjunct Professor
Infectious Disease Division
Department of Internal Medicine
and
Senior Medical Advisor
Science and Technology Directorate
Department of Homeland Security
on loan from:
Bidefense Division
Biology and Biotechnology Research Program
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

email: ascher1@llnl.gov

Dr. Ascher, who currently serves as the Senior Medical Advisor to the Department of Homeland Security, has a long history in infectious disease research. After his medical postgraduate training in infectious diseases and immunology in New York, he served as a research and clinical investigator at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases where he studied mechanisms of protective immunogenicity of microbial vaccines in animals and humans. He was a full-time faculty member of the Division of Infectious Diseases of the Department of Medicine, University of California, Irvine from 1978 to 1985 where he continued cellular immunologic studies of rickettsial vaccines. After coming to the State Health Department's Viral and Rickettsial Disease Laboratory in 1985, he established and led the laboratory's HIV research program. He was appointed Chief of the Laboratory in 1995 and retired from the State in 2003. He subsequently joined the Biology and Biotechnology Research Program of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

While at the VRDL, he played a major role in the evaluation and improvement of first and second-generation diagnostic methods for HIV antibody. As a key investigator of the San Francisco Men's Health Study, he introduced and supervised high-grade laboratory capability to this cohort study that resulted in a number of seminal publications on the laboratory-based natural history of HIV infection. With Dr. Sheppard, he was among the first to realize the significance of immune system activation in HIV.

He served as Co-principal investigator of the HIVNET Central Laboratory Contract. He is a founding member of the planning committee and continuing participant in the fourteen annual meetings on Retrovirus Serology sponsored by the Association of Public Health Laboratories. He is Associate Editor of the Control of Communicable Disease Manual published by the American Public Health Association and serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.

Dr. Ascher served as the lead for biological defense activities in the California Department of Health Services. He is a founding member of the Working Group on Civilian Biodefense of the Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies of the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.

In the fall of 2001, Dr. Ascher joined the Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness in the Office of the Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services as consultant in laboratory issue. With the establishment of the Deparment of Homeland Security, he moved to their Science and Technology Directorate in March of 2003.