Faculty

Helen Y Chu

Professor, Epidemiology
Professor, Medicine - Allergy and Infectious Dis.
Program Lead, Infectious Disease, Brotman Baty Institute, Medicine - Allergy and Infectious Dis.
Term Professorship, Medicine - Allergy and Infectious Dis.
Associate Dean for Research, School of Public Health


Education

MPH Epidemiology, University of Washington, 2012
MD Medicine, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, 2005
BA Cornell University, 2001

Research Areas

Research Interests

Dr. Chu's research is focused on maternal immunization, in particular vaccines against influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). She studies the virologic and immunologic correlates of protection from respiratory viral infections in pregnant women, infants, and older adults, and performs clinical trials of vaccine candidates in both domestic and international sites, including Nepal and Bangladesh. She has developed immunologic assays to study transplacental transfer and decay kinetics of RSV antibody, and nosocomial and household transmission of respiratory viruses by genotypic analysis and molecular sequencing.

Recent Publications (PubMed)

Household Transmission of Human Metapneumovirus and Human Parainfluenza Viruses 1-4 in the United States, 2022-2024.
(2026 Aug 3)
medRxiv
Roychoudhury P, Elias-Warren A, Wetzler E, Kim HG, Kong K, Xie H, Spring C, Mills MG, Harteloo A, Frivold C, Hollcroft M, Drummond M, Hatchie T, Clark E, Ehmen B, Han PD, Gamboa L, Grindstaff S, Stone J, Hoffman KL, Greninger AL, Starita LM, Lockwood C, Englund JA, Weil AA, Reich SL, Mularski RA, Schmidt MA, Kuntz JL, Naleway AL, Chu HY
Crisis as Catalyst: The future of the NIH driving scientific discovery.
(2026 Jul 31)
J Infect Dis
Weil AA, Baker SM, Buckner FS, Gottlieb GS, Hybiske K, Koelle DM, Reid TB, Sabo MC, Seshadri C, Shah JA, Van Voorhis WC, Chu HY
Epidemiology of symptomatic respiratory viral codetections among children and adults in the United States: a post-hoc analysis of a prospective cohort study from 2022-2024.
(2026 Jul 30)
Clin Microbiol Infect
Erlianti CP, Wetzler EA, Weil AA, Naleway AL, Carone M, Chu HY
Household Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in Washington and Oregon, United States, 2022-2024.
(2026 Aug 4)
J Pediatric Infect Dis Soc 15(8):
Babu TM, Casto A, Hollcroft M, Hoffman KL, Cox SN, Acker Z, Bennett JC, Boisvert CL, Briggs-Hagen M, Clark E, Drummond M, Ehmen B, Elias-Warren A, Feldstein LR, Fortmann SP, Frivold C, Gamboa L, Groom HC, Han P, Iwu CD, Kuntz JL, Lockwood CM, MacMillan M, Mernaugh JF, Mularski RA, Plumb ID, Hatchie T, Reich S, Schmidt MA, Smith N, Starita L, Varga A, Yetz N, Englund JA, Weil AA, Midgley CM, Carone M, Naleway AL, Chu HY
The Best of Both Worlds - Using Clinical Trial and Observational Data to Evaluate Vaccine Protection.
(2026 Jul 23)
N Engl J Med 395(4): 313-316
Monto AS, Chu HY
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