William (Bill) Shafer is Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Emory University School of Medicine.
He is a senior research career scientist at the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Director of the Antimicrobial Resistance and Therapeutic Discovery Training Program and Co-Director of the Emory Antibiotic Resistance Center.
Bill has been on the faculty of Emory University since 1982, and continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs since 1984 for his work on antibiotic resistance.
Over the past three decades, Bill’s research group has examined Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Staphylococcus aureus for their ability to resist both classical antibiotics and host-derived antimicrobials (principally, cationic antimicrobial peptides). A major finding that drives current work deals with the role of drug efflux pumps that contribute to the resistance of N. gonorrhoeae to both antibiotics and host antimicrobials.
Bill has published over 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. Most of these publications relate to genetic studies on N. gonorrhoeae with a focus on antibiotic resistance.
Bill received his PhD degree in microbiology from Kansas State University in 1979 where he studied the genetics of enterotoxin B synthesis and methicillin resistance expressed by S. aureus. He moved to the Emory University School of Medicine after his postdoctoral studies at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, where he studied the genetics of antimicrobial resistance expressed by N. gonorrhoeae.