William A. Petri

William A. Petri is a physician-scientist at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the Wade Hampton Frost Professor of Epidemiology. He is a member of the Association of American Physicians and the American Society for Clinical Investigation, both medical honor societies recognizing distinguished physicians. Petri is the past president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. He developed an FDA-approved test to detect amebiasis, and later, with significant funding from NIH, developed a vaccine program. He is the highest funded researcher in the School of Medicine. Under his leadership, the division's annual research funding has increased from 0.5 million to $19 million, making it the highest externally-funded program at the university.

Career Petri began his education studying chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After three years, he was admitted to the University of Virginia, completing his M.D., and Ph.D. in 1982. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Case Western Reserve University, followed by a fellowship in infectious diseases at UVA. He became an assistant professor in 1988 upon the completion of his fellowship. He has chaired UVA's Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health since 2001.

In his laboratory, Petri studies enteric infections in the developing world, molecular parasitology, host defense and Clostridioides difficile, and human immune response to Entamoeba histolytica and strain-associated differences in E. histolytica virulence. He leads the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s PROVIDE study in Bangladesh and India exploring new solutions for the problem of oral poliovirus and rotavirus vaccine failures in the developing world. He was a member of the NIAID Blue Ribbon Panel on Bioterrorism and its Implications for Biomedical Research in 2002.

In 2017, he was appointed chair of the World Health Organization’s Polio Research Committee.

He was an editor of Infection and Immunity from 1999-2009. He has continuously served on advisory committees for the NIH since 1993.

In 2017, he was named Virginia Outstanding Scientist of the year. In 2021 he received the Maxwell Finland Award.

In 2022, he received the Walter Reed Medal from The American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene.

Personal life He has two sisters that are academic physicians at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School, and a brother who is an assistant US attorney in Florida. He and his wife have five children.

Highly cited publications The Genome Of The Protist Parasite Entamoeba histolytica. Loftus, B; Anderson, I; Davies, R et al. Nature 433: 865-868, 2005 Amebiasis. Haque, R; Huston, CD; Hughes, M; Petri WA Jr. New England Journal of Medicine 348: 1565-1573, 2003 Isolation of the Galactose-Binding Lectin That Mediates the in vitro Adherence of Entamoeba histolytica. Petri, WA; Smith, RD; Schlesinger, PH et al. Journal of Clinical Investigation 80:1238-1244, 1987 Cat-Scratch Disease, Bacillary Angiomatosis, and Other Infections due to Rochalimaea. Adal, KA; Cockerell, CJ; Petri, WA New England Journal of Medicine 330: 1509-1515, 1994 Rat And Human Colonic Mucins Bind to and Inhibit Adherence Lectin of Entamoeba-histolytica. Chadee, K; Petri, Wa; Innes, Dj; et al. Journal of Clinical Investigation 80: 1245-1254, 1987