Eric Freed

Dr. Eric O. Freed received his Ph.D. in 1990 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His Ph.D. work focused on the function of the murine leukemia virus and HIV envelope glycoproteins in membrane fusion and virus entry.

He joined the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the NIH in 1992, where he worked on HIV assembly and entry/post-entry events in the HIV replication cycle.

In 1997 Dr. Freed was appointed as a Tenure-Track Investigator in NIAID, and he was promoted to a tenured Senior Investigator position in 2002. In 2003 he joined the HIV Drug Resistance Program (HIV DRP, later renamed the HIV Dynamics and Replication Program) as Head of the Virus-Cell Interaction Section. Dr. Freed was appointed Deputy Director of the HIV DRP in 2014 and since 2015 has served as Director of the Program.  His research focuses on HIV-1 Gag trafficking, Env incorporation, virus assembly, budding, release, maturation, and drug resistance. 

Dr. Freed has a special interest in the complex relationship between viral proteins and cellular factors and pathways, believing that characterizing fundamental aspects of the retrovirus replication cycle will suggest novel targets for the development of antiretroviral therapies. 

Dr. Freed has received a number of awards and serves on the editorial boards of several journals.  He is the founding editor-in-chief of the open-access journal Viruses and is an editor or associate editor for J. Mol. Biol., Science Advances, and Fields Virology.