Susan Weiss

Susan Weiss is a distinguished scientist who has dedicated four decades to coronavirus research at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. After earning her BA in Biology from Brandeis University and PhD in Microbiology from Harvard University, she completed postdoctoral training at UC San Francisco with Nobel laureates J. Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus. Since joining Penn in 1980, she has risen to become Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Co-director of the Penn Center for Research on Coronaviruses and Other Emerging Pathogens. Her groundbreaking research has focused on understanding coronavirus replication, pathogenesis, and host immune responses, working extensively with murine coronavirus, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2. Her recent work investigates viral interactions with host innate immune responses and double-stranded RNA-induced antiviral pathways. A fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Weiss was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2023. Her expertise has proven invaluable during the COVID-19 pandemic, validating her decades of work on what was once considered an obscure field of study.