My group's main areas of research are molecular virology, viral pathogenesis, and virus-host interactions. The viruses we study are encephalitic flaviviruses such as West Nile virus and Zika virus. More recently SARS-COV-2 has become one of the main research focus. The goal of the research is to determine the mechanisms by which these viruses cause disease in the hosts and to identify viral and host factors determining the outcome of infection.

The group uses a range of classical and more modern approaches including molecular manipulations with viral infectious cDNA clones and replicons, deep mutational scanning, transient and stable expression of viral proteins and noncoding RNAs, viral replication and virulence assays, microarrays, mass spectrometry, next generation sequencing analysis, siRNA knockdowns, and knockout cells and mice.