Dr. Steven Wechsler is an international leader in the study of the herpes simplex virus (HSV). He and his team study how the virus becomes latent or inactive in the body, and how it reactivates and causes repeated infections. He is a professor at the Gavin Herbert Eye Institute, UC Irvine School of Medicine and in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.
Dr. Wechsler is also Director of Virology Research at the Eye Institute, a member of the Center for Virus Research at UC Irvine, the principal investigator on two research grants from the National Institutes of Health, co-investigator on two additional NIH grants, and a Research to Prevent Blindness Senior Scientific Investigator. He leads a team studying how the herpes virus becomes latent or inactive in the body, how it reactivates, and how it flares up again to cause corneal scarring. His long term goal is to find a means to stop recurrences or scarring caused by herpes.
After earning a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dr. Wechsler completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed basic research papers in highly respected journals.