Speaker Profile
Ph.D., Genotyping Unit Chief, Microbial Diseases Laboratory Program, California Department of Public Health
Biography
In her current role, Dr. Varvara Kozyreva directs the Genotyping Unit, delivering surveillance and outbreak investigation support for food- and waterborne infections, working closely with state, local, and federal partners as a part of the CDC’s national surveillance network. Dr. Kozyreva joined the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) in 2014 as a Research Lead for the NGS Core Laboratory, where she worked to implement and standardize next generation sequencing for public health applications, developing workflows and validations of new methods under CLIA regulations. At CDPH, Varvara also worked on NGS characterization of rare pathogens and performed populational studies of emerging highly antibiotic-resistant and virulent strains of microorganisms. Previously, Dr. Kozyreva conducted research on the antimicrobial resistance and molecular epidemiology of bacterial pathogens with a focus on hospital-associated infections. Additionally, Dr. Varvara Kozyreva spent part of her career performing basic cancer biochemistry research investigating invasive breast cancer.
Talk
CLIA-compliant Validation of Clinical Microbial Whole-Genome Sequencing
This talk addresses the challenges of validating Whole Genome Sequencing for clinical and public health microbiological applications under Clinical Laboratory Improvements Act (CLIA) regulations. With lack of common standards, scarcity of reference materials, and difficulties in translation of CLIA performance parameters into WGS-language, CLIA-validation of WGS remains a nontrivial task.
