Donald Harn, PhD
Professor and GRA Distinguished Investigator, University of Georgia, Georgia

Dr. Donald Harn is a Georgia Research Alliance Distinguished Investigator and Professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine.  Prior to coming to Georgia in 2009, he was a Professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Harn’s research focuses on host-helminth relationships (Helminths are worm-like parasites that live and feed inside of living hosts).  He has a particular interest in vaccine development focusing on the human helminth parasitic disease, schistosomiasis and also on HIV. Dr. Harn has also found that helminth infection reduces the body’s ability to respond to vaccines and is currently looking at means of enhancing vaccines to overcome this potentially large problem. In addition to vaccine research, Dr. Harn also is working with novel anti-inflammatory molecules to develop new therapies for inflammation based diseases such as obesity, Type I diabetes and autoimmune diseases.  Besides basic bench research, he has extensive vaccine field studies ongoing in water buffalo herds in China.

Dr. Harn received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School before joining the faculty in 1985.  Dr. Harn is a member of the American Association of Immunologists and the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and has served on the editorial board of International Parasitology since 1999.