Janis Weeks is an academic expert in neuroplasticity and infectious and parasitic diseases. She is a neuroscientist who studied plasticity in synaptic transmission and neural circuits before shifting her research focus to infectious and parasitic diseases about a decade ago. She continues to teach classes on tropical diseases in Africa, including emerging infectious diseases and pandemics, building on more than 20 years of education and research capacity building on the African continent. She has been Senior Advisor for Global STEM Programs, UO Office of International Affairs (2015-17); a Member of the Board on Life Sciences for The National Academies (2015-18); and the recipient of a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Explorations grant (2013). She retired from UO in 2017 to focus on her UO spin-out companies, NemaMetrix and InVivo Biosystems, where she serves as co-founder and chief global health officer. These companies specialize in custom gene editing, drug testing and developing innovative technologies to advance human health. 

Recent Media:
COVID vaccine could be available this month, but who gets the first dose? (KVAL-TV, Dec. 8, 2020)
Five UO Experts on COVID-19 (Oregon Quarterly, summer 2020)
COVID-19 provided UO disease course a teaching moment (Around the O, April 27, 2020)
What families need to know about the coronavirus antibody test (Fatherly, April 21, 2020)
NemaMetrix job creation award (The Register Guard, Nov. 15, 2018)  
Oregon offers tax credit on gifts to venture development fund (Around the O, Nov 12, 2018) 
UO-made tool ready to take on disease-causing worms (Around the O, Dec. 27, 2016) 
Eugene startup NemaMetrix raises $1 million in funding (The Register Guard, June 7, 2016)