Dr. Imamichi was born in Tokyo, Japan. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from the Department of Pharmaceutical Science at Hokkaido University, majoring in cellular Immunology and biochemistry. He came to the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR/NIH) in 1991 as a post-doctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Immunology, mentored by Dr. Sharon Wahl. Imamichi then joined Program Resources, Inc. (a precursor to the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research) as a staff scientist in the Laboratory of Molecular Retrovirology in 1995 under the supervision of Dr. Normal Saltzman. Since then, Imamichi studied the mechanism of HIV drug resistance and anti-HIV cytokines and reagents. In 2000, he was appointed the Laboratory of Human Retrovirology laboratory head. In 2015, he accepted the position of the laboratory chief of the Laboratory of Human Retrovirology and Immunoinformatics. Imamichi’s laboratory provides clinical/translational research support for HIV, Ebola, Zika, and influenza virus infections in the Division of Clinical Research at NIAID. Imamichi and his staff have substantially contributed to infectious disease research. His team identified IL-27 as an anti-HIV cytokine and Ku70 as a DNA-mediated IFN inducer. They maintain a bioinformatics functional annotation tool, DAVID.
