Dr. Shaunna Shen and Dr. David Montefiori's major research interests are viral immunology and HIV vaccine development, with a special emphasis on neutralizing antibodies. One of their highest priorities is to identify immunogens that generate broadly neutralizing antibodies for inclusion in vaccines. Many aspects of neutralizing antibodies are studied in his laboratory, including mechanisms of neutralization, viral escape from neutralization, epitope diversity among the many different genetic subtypes and geographic distributions of the virus, neutralization epitopes, and the requirements to elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies by vaccination.