Dr Ralph Pantophlet | Professor
Simon Fraser University

Dr. Pantophlet completed his PhD at the University of Leiden, subsequent postdoctoral training at the Scripps Research Institute, and a one-year fellowship at Research Center Borstel. He began as a tenure track Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in 2008, was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2014, and promoted to Professor in 2022. Dr. Pantophlet is also an Associate Member in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at SFU, Head of SFU’s Flow Cytometry Lab, and Scientific Director for the SFU Containment Level 3 (CL3) Laboratory.

Dr. Pantophlet has authored and co-authored roughly 60 manuscripts, many in leading journals in the field. He has received roughly $5M in operating funds and over $1M in infrastructure funds during his time at SFU. Main operating grants that he has held as principal investigator include grants from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Project grants.

Dr. Pantophlet’s research accomplishments have been recognized in the national and international communities by several awards. Notably, he received CIHR New Investigator award shortly after starting at SFU and a highly competitive Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar award in 2012. More recently, he was recognized with an Excellence in Basic Science award from the Canadian HIV research community. His lab’s research has also been highlighted by the CIHR and Nature Methods in feature articles. Research work in Dr. Pantophlet's laboratory is focused on investigating antibody responses to HIV and other viruses of biomedical interest, particularly in the context of host-virus interactions and anti-viral antibody responses. Knowledge gained from studying the interactions of antibodies with viruses is applied to the 'rational' design of immunogens that may be developed into modern pre-clinical vaccine candidates and, ultimately, new and better vaccines.