Research Director

Suzanne D. Vernon, PhD is the research director of BHC and is one of the nation’s leading researchers in ME/CFS.  She is dedicated to finding treatments for chronic illnesses so that patients can return to long and productive lives. Her research helps find the causes and biomarkers for viral induced diseases and there have been several exciting discoveries. She published one of the first papers demonstrating that an HIV protein could turn on human papillomavirus cancer-causing genes. She spearheaded one of the first multiomics computational challenges to identify diagnostic biomarkers and treatment targets for myalgic encephalomyelitis. She was part of an international team to discover that severity of acute infection, rather than the specific pathogen, predicted who developed chronic disease. Dr Vernon thrives on disruptive innovation in research. This is how we will improve the health and lives of all people.     

Education and Training

Personal Statement

I have dedicated the past 20 years of my professional research career on identifying biomarkers and possible causes of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). I have co-authored 105 peer- reviewed scientific papers that you can view here. I spent 17 years at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studying human papillomavirus, opportunistic infections in HIV-infected women and chronic fatigue syndrome. My CDC tenure was highlighted by a number of “firsts” including the demonstration of molecular interaction between HPV and HIV and conceiving and organizing an international BIG DATA computational challenge. At CDC I assembled an eclectic team of molecular biologists, engineers, physicists, and computational biologists to merge data collected in laboratory, clinical and epidemiology studies with the goal of identifying biomarkers to objectively define a complex, medically unexplained disease known as ME/CFS. I transitioned into the nonprofit sector to engage patients more readily as partners in the research process. To do so I “built” the Research Institute Without Walls (RIWW), the first nonprofit patient-centered research initiative focused on identifying diagnostic biomarkers and disease-modifying treatment for ME/CFS. The RIWW included a patient registry and biobank and attracted some of the brightest investigators from the best institutions into ME/CFS research. Now as Research Director at the Bateman Horne Center, I bring my experience, connections, and collaborations to build a research program focused on developing objective diagnostic measures and evidence-based treatments for ME/CFS. 

Positions and Honors

For details on Vernon’s additional contributions to science, publications, and research support click here.