Sara Cherry

Sara Cherry is the John W. Eckman Professor of Medical Science; Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Microbiology and Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics; the Scientific Director of the High-Throughput Screening Core; and the Director of the Program for Chemogenomic Discovery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

She leads research at the interface between viruses and hosts, using unbiased screening approaches to identify genes and drugs that impact human disease. Cherry's assessment of therapeutics for effectiveness includes efficacy against mosquito- and tick-borne viruses, including Chikungunya, West Nile, and Zika. She and her team also screened coronavirus therapies during the COVID-19 pandemic and continue to conduct research on emerging RNA viruses

Cherry is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

She received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.