Homayon Ghiasi, PhD is Director of the Viral Immunology and Vaccine Development Center at Cedars-Sinai's Ophthalmology Research Laboratories.

Dr. Ghiasi's primary research interests include developing a safe and efficacious vaccine against ocular HSV-1 (herpes simplex virus) infection and determining the role of neurotropic viruses in mutiple sclerosis. A recognized leader in the field of HSV vaccine development, Dr. Ghiasi's work has been published in numerous high quality, peer reviewed journals and is on the editorial board of Current Eye Research.

Dr. Ghiasi has been fully funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 1993. He currently is principal investigator on two NIH/RO1 grants related to the study of HSV-1 and holds three United States patents.

Dr. Ghiasi received his doctorate degree from North Dakota State University. He completed postdoctoral training at South Dakota State University, University of Alabama at Birmingham and the NERC Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology in Oxford, England. Before coming to Cedars-Sinai in 1987, he worked as visiting assistant research virologist in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California, Los Angeles.