On Feb. 1, 2025, Brandi Johnson-Weaver, PhD, was promoted to assistant professor. Before being promoted to medical instructor in July 2023, she served as a senior research scientist in Duke Pathology under the direction of Herman Staats, PhD. During her time in that role, Johnson-Weaver collaborated with Staats to win a five-year $1.1 million Adjuvant Comparison and Characterization contract from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease in 2022.
Johnson-Weaver currently leads a team that aims to utilize vaccine strategies to develop more effective therapeutics to treat allergic diseases, including peanut allergies. She is interested in developing vaccines and adjuvants that modulate the host immune system to induce protective responses against allergens. Currently, she is investigating the ability of mRNA vaccines expressing peanut allergens to influence immune responses in peanut-allergic hosts. In order to develop more effective therapeutics for allergies, she is also interested in investigating the influence of environmental conditions on host responses to vaccines and allergens.
Johnson-Weaver earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Chemistry from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. She joined the Duke Pathology Department as a graduate student in 2009, completed her doctoral studies in 2015, and remained a member of Duke Pathology.