Vanessa Harris is an infectious disease physician and Assistant Professor at the Department of Global Health, Amsterdam UMC, University of Amsterdam. She obtained her bachelor’s degree summa cum laude at Amherst College in the United States and then obtained her MD from Harvard Medical School. She was a Fulbright Scholar from 2002-3. She subsequently completed her internal medicine residency and infectious disease fellowship and PhD at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on understanding the determinants of the diminished efficacy of the oral vaccines in developing countries. She is particularly interested in how interactions between the intestinal microbiome and host immunity can drive vulnerabilities to infectious diseases in global health.