Dr. Dennis Kyle Selected as USF Health Distinguished Professor
Dr. Dennis Kyle, Professor in the Department of Global Health was recently selected as one of only two USF Health Distinguished Professors awarded this year. This is the highest honor bestowed on a member of the USF Health faculty and we know that Dr. Kyle clearly merits this distinction.
Dr. Kyle majored in Biology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (BA, 1979) and completed a PhD in Zoology at Clemson University (1984). Following a postdoctoral position at the University of Georgia, he began a 21 year association with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR). During this time he led key efforts with the US Army’s Drug and Vaccine Development Programs, eventually serving as Deputy Director of the Division of Experimental Therapeutics. During this period he also served as the Chief, Department of Immunology and Parasitology at the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences (AFRIMS) in Bangkok, Thailand (1991-94) and was a senior scientist in the malaria drug program at the Australian Army Malaria Institute (AMI) from January 2002 through June 2004. Dr. Kyle has more than 140 publications in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, serves on peer review panels for the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO), chaired the Genomics and Discovery Research Steering Committee and the Compound Evaluation Network for WHO, and has research funding from NIAID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Medicines for Malaria Venture.. Dr. Kyle is the principal investigator for a three-year Gates Foundation grant seeking to develop human liver models that could more quickly and accurately test potential drug candidates for vivax and falciparum malaria. On February 2011, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently granted the University of South Florida nearly $5.5 million to find a new way of testing and treating malaria.
His research interests include the discovery and development of new antiparasitic drugs and elucidation of mechanisms of antimalarial drug resistance. Predoctoral training opportunities in the Kyle Lab include basic and translational approaches to drug discovery and development as well as chemical biology of antiparasitic drugs and elucidation of drug resistance mechanisms. All of the current projects in the Kyle Lab are multidisciplinary and result in active collaborations with colleagues in chemistry, molecular biology, pharmacology, and clinical practice.
