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Infectious Curiosity: Three Physician-Scientists’ Perspectives on Infectious Disease

A Q&A with Dr. Bill Petri MD PhD, Dr. Patrick Jackson MD, and Dr. Gregory Madden MD

Article written by Evan Lamb

Continuing VJM’s Expert Q&A series focused on exemplary faculty at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine, we sat down with three physician-scientists in the Division of Infectious Disease (ID) and International Health. In this installment, our experts, all of whom are UVA alums, share their insights, research findings, and words of advice for aspirational clinicians and researchers.


Dr. Bill Petri earned both his MD and PhD from UVA and returned after residency to complete his Fellowship in Infectious Diseases at UVA. He has spearheaded one of UVA’s flagship research programs for more than three decades, focused on genetic underpinnings and molecular interactions between multiple infectious agents and their human hosts. Dr. Petri maintains an active clinical presence with direct patient care and advocates for trainees in his role as both a former Division Chair and current Co-Director for an NIH-funded T32 Training Grant.



Dr. Patrick Jackson received his MD from UVA, followed by his residency and both clinical and research Fellowships in Infectious Diseases. Throughout his training and as a faculty member, he developed a research program within the UVA Thaler Center for HIV and Human Retrovirus Research that incorporates basic, translational, and clinical investigations. As Director of UVA’s Infectious Diseases Fellowship and Co-Leader of the microbiology and immunology core curriculum for medical students, he cultures education, growth, and curiosity in nascent physicians and scientists.



Dr. Gregory Madden earned his MD from UVA and returned for his Fellowship in Infectious Diseases. During his Fellowship, he earned his MS in Data Science. His principal research interests encompass data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) as they apply to immunologic responses and hospital epidemiology.












On Medicine and Infectious Disease

Our three experts were all drawn toward a career in Medicine, particularly ID, due to the significant improvement of health and livelihoods through holistic approaches. These expert practitioners reflected on the skill of ID physicians to incorporate a patient’s current condition with medical, surgical, family, and social histories to inform their diagnostic and treatment decisions.


Dr. Jackson noted that his early experiences with ID physicians included their openness to consultations in which they were dedicated to learning a patient’s history and provided sincere thought to patient care.


Dr. Madden saw himself reflected in his ID mentors and developed an interest in hospital epidemiology through these relations. A recurring theme was that ID encompasses the full breadth of hospital operations from direct patient care to hospital epidemiology, antibiotic stewardship, and laboratory diagnostics among other disciplines.


Dr. Petri noted that ID is a discipline that readily lends itself to academic medicine and research with ample opportunities for molding one’s career toward the aspects that bring the most fulfillment. To this end, Dr. Petri incorporates regular periods of self-reflection and assessment of his current career with intentionality to ensure he is finding meaning and making personal and professional growth.

On Research and Curiosity

Our three experts share a passion for investigation and discovery, evidenced by their significant commitments to UVA’s research endeavors. Again, all remarked that ID as a field is highly conducive to and appreciative of research. Our experts’ research programs span from basic benchwork at the genetic and molecular levels, in silico computational work, clinical trials, to hospital and international public health/epidemiology.


Dr. Petri leads a multidisciplinary research program focused on host-pathogen interactions at mucosal surfaces. His initial research focused on the gastrointestinal parasite Entamoeba histolytica but has since broadened to include the protozoan Cryptosporidium, the bacterial pathogen Clostridioides difficile, and the virus SARS-CoV-2. His research program aims to characterize the mechanisms of host immune responses to these significant pathogens at the molecular level. His research also includes longitudinal studies on gastrointestinal diseases with regard to genetic risk factors and childhood development among a cohort in Bangladesh. With this wide-reaching work, Dr. Petri emphasizes the importance of collaboration and cooperation among research groups. He emphasized that this work would not be possible without the multidisciplinary team of immunologists, geneticists, microbiologists, childhood development practitioners, and clinical coordinators.


Dr. Jackson highly values the important perspective that physicians bring to research spaces. His work on the molecular underpinnings of HIV leverages the background and skillsets of the many team members who make these endeavors fruitful. He emphasized the importance of collaboration between individuals and disciplines to move research forward and the value of ‘team science’. As a practicing clinician, his knowledge and expertise in HIV diagnostics and treatment have influenced the direction of his research program, for example, by understanding which anti-retroviral therapies are gaining traction and warrant further investigation versus which ones are up-and-coming with underexplored potential. He also noted the importance of pragmatically thinking about how a new discovery, diagnostic tool, or treatment would fit into the clinical pipeline. Dr. Jackson also encourages trainees to gain experience with chart reviews, case reports, and clinical trial design throughout all stages of their careers. Through proactive efforts, this openness led Dr. Jackson to direct clinical trials at UVA focused on caring for and treating COVID-19 patients in the early stages of the pandemic.


Dr. Madden began his research career as an undergraduate and continued as a medical student focused on basic science in the wet lab. He found this work to be intellectually stimulating and augmented his pursuit of knowledge. When introduced to epidemiology and data science as they applied to healthcare, he found a new academic passion. Dr. Madden valued the new approaches that machine learning and big data brought to the pursuit of tackling longstanding challenges in ID. He now applies these nascent methods to discern disease outcomes between patients infected with C. difficile based on testing results and numerous biomarkers. To advance his research program, he self-taught methods for statistical analysis and pursued his MS in Data Science as a Fellow in UVA’s ID division. He strongly encourages trainees to discover new avenues for investigation, adopt novel approaches, and to teach themselves new skills.


On Mentorship and Education

Each one of our experts embodies the characteristics of a dedicated academic clinician and scientist as it pertains to mentoring upcoming generations. They each support and respect trainees at all levels and from all backgrounds. In each conversation with our experts, they noted that the strong mentorship and guidance they received from their role models were essential to leading them to where they are now.


Dr. Petri and Dr. Madden both emphasized the importance of trainee-driven research to investigate the topics they find most exciting. In the case of Dr. Petri’s research program, he remarked that certain outstanding graduate students and Fellows were responsible for expanding his lab’s focus into mucosal immunology as it applies to the numerous pathogens they study. Our experts facilitate trainee-oriented endeavors through trialing wet-lab, translational, clinical, and in silico studies to find what type of work they find most rewarding and in line with their skillsets. Clinically, Dr. Petri’s mentoring philosophy emphasizes patient care that focuses on resident- and fellow-led rounds in which they interpret data and formulate treatment plans as independent practitioners before workshopping with him as the attending physician.


Dr. Jackson and Dr. Madden both endorsed evolving mentoring philosophies over time. They underscored that mentoring styles should be calibrated to each trainee regarding their needs, strengths, and level of training. Dr. Madden discussed how mentoring and educating are an iterative one-on-one process with each trainee to jointly identify the best training style. Dr. Petri reflected on how his mentoring has evolved over the years, but a paramount feature is to approach one’s trainees with respect and think of them not as employees or someone who works under the mentor, but as future peers/colleagues.


Dr. Jackson and Dr. Petri both highly value institutional training programs as the ID Fellowship Director/Microbiology System leader for medical students and Co-Director of the ID Training Grant, respectively. Through these systems, they educate many learners and provide formal feedback and evaluation that advance trainees’ career trajectories.


On the Future

As a field, ID has gone through significant changes from the development of germ theory, antibiotic discovery, and vaccine development among many other revolutions. Our experts all commented on the ever-growing importance of ID to clinical medicine and the impact that new discoveries in the field have on patient care.


Dr. Petri is hopeful that recent successes with new vaccine platforms (e.g., mRNA, outer-membrane-vesicle-based) will decrease the burden of diseases that have so far been refractory to immunization. Furthermore, the proven efficacy of monoclonal antibodies against infectious diseases supports their use in clinical management. However, despite promising developments on the horizon, our experts caution that there will always be new challenges with which to contend, whether that be new pathogens, new antibiotic resistance profiles, or more complex patients to treat. For example, Dr. Jackson foresees greater numbers of immunocompromised patients as a result of new therapies for immunosuppression in fields ranging from rheumatology to oncology. Furthermore, current immunosuppressive therapies are becoming more widely used and easier to access.


Each conversation also discussed the increasingly collaborative nature of medicine with communication between specialties and practices. This was readily apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which a systemwide response was needed to care for patients, identify new treatments, and coordinate healthcare operations within hospitals and communities. Our experts believe that ID practitioners are well-positioned for collaborative team-based medicine.


Regarding basic science research, Dr. Petri believes that this is the most exciting time to be a physician-scientist due to the rapidly expanding toolset researchers have at their disposal. Advanced methods are becoming more readily accessible, and multi-omics approaches are enabling rapid discovery. Dr. Madden is optimistic about the impact that AI/machine learning will have on advancing basic and translational research. Both Dr. Petri and Dr. Madden anticipate greater emphasis on host responses to infection, how these responses often result in host damage, and how host immune responses can be modulated to better combat pathogens.

Interested in reading more about our experts’ work? Check out some of their recent publications below!

Dr. Bill Petri

  1. Petri WA. Thirty years of molecular medicine: reflections from an academic physician-scientist, 1995-2025. Trends Mol Med. 2025;31(4):298-300. doi:10.1016/j.molmed.2025.01.012.

  2. Brown AC, Uddin MJ, Munday RM, et al. The cAMP responsive element modulator (CREM) transcription factor influences susceptibility to undernutrition and infection. mBio. 2025;16(8):e0139025. doi:10.1128/mbio.01390-25.

  3. Gilchrist CA, Petri WA, Hossain B, et al. Decrease in incidence of diarrhea due to Cryptosporidium in Bangladeshi children is associated with an increase in anti-Cryptosporidium antibody avidity. J Infect Dis. 2025;232(3):e362-e371. doi:10.1093/infdis/jiaf253.

  4. Donlan AN, Mallawaarachchi I, Sasson JM, et al. Dupilumab use is associated with protection from coronavirus disease 2019 mortality: a retrospective analysis. Clin Infect Dis. 2023;76(1):148-151. doi:10.1093/cid/ciac745.

Dr. Patrick Jackson

  1. Dzhivhuho GA, Jackson PEH, Honeycutt ES, et al. Rev-RRE activity modulates HIV-1 replication and latency reactivation: implications for viral persistence and cure strategies. PLoS Pathog. 2025;21(5):1012885. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1012885.

  2. Jackson PEH, Holsey J, Turs L, et al. Rev-Rev response element activity selection bias at the human immunodeficiency virus transmission bottleneck. Open Forum Infect Dis. 2023;10(10):ofad486. doi:10.1093/ofid/ofad486.

  3. ACTT-2 Study Group Members. Baricitinib plus remdesivir for hospitalized adults with Covid-19. N Engl J Med. 2021;384(9):795-807. doi:10.1056/NJMoa2031994.

Dr. Gregory Madden

  1. Madden GR, Mesner IG, Cox HL, et al. Reduced Clostridium difficile tests and laboratory-identified events with a computerized clinical decision support tool and financial incentive. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiology. 2018;39(6):737-740. doi:10.1017/ice.2018.53.

  2. Madden GR, Rigo I, Boone R, et al. Novel biomarkers, including tcdB PCR cycle threshold, for predicting recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection. Infect Immun. 2023;91(4):e00092-23. doi:10.1128/iai.00092-23.

  3. Madden GR, Boone RH, Lee E, et al. Predicting Clostridioides difficile infection outcomes with explainable machine learning. eBioMedicine. 2024;106:105244. doi:10.1016/j.ebiom.2024.105244.

  4. Madden GR, Preissner R, Preissner S, et al. Anti-interleukin-23 treatment linked to improved Clostridioides difficile infection survival. Gut Microbes. 2025;17(1):2480195. doi:10.1080/19590976.2025.2480195.

Stay tuned for more interviews from our Expert Q&A series, where we spotlight faculty across specialties working at the cutting edge of patient care, research, and education!

 
 
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